16bit Applications on 64bit Windows?

[mosaix]

I have an old 16bit version of DOS Informix 4gl that runs fine under Windows XP. It won't run under 64bit Windows 10. I've seen ways of running 16bit stuff under Windows 10 using an XP simulator. It seems overly complicated.

Anybody tried anything else?

 

[tinkerdan]

Many of the programs I use at work were designed for xp so I usually have to attempt compatibility modes. This is if you can get the install to work.

You may also have to force it through both the shortcut advanced button to run as administrator. And set the compatibility mode to run as administrator.

So far the only problem I've had is with my old coreldraw program because it needed fonts loaded and windows 10 would not load those fonts. However I managed to talk corel into giving me the standard upgrade price by explaining that we used the program quite a bit at work and had not needed to update it since it worked quite well for us for a number of years.

However a large portion of the programs are 32 bit or at least 32 bit compatible and I've not tried to force too many 16bit programs to run; though there is one and the only problem that one has is that it needs to communicate through an actual serial port and not an emulator and sometimes finding a card with a compatible serial port is difficult.

I'd attempt the built in compatibility modes; although you might first try setting the properties as mentioned above to administrator and try executing it because often its just blocking the program from executing because it looks evil.

 

[Mirannan]

I have an old 16bit version of DOS Informix 4gl that runs fine under Windows XP. It won't run under 64bit Windows 10. I've seen ways of running 16bit stuff under Windows 10 using an XP simulator. It seems overly complicated.

Anybody tried anything else?

Apart from tinkerdan's solution, perhaps you could try running a virtual machine under windows 10 and installing XP on that? I'm not sure, but if win10 doesn't have a virtual machine program built in I'm fairly sure there are other, open-source, ones.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

As I understand it, the CPU physically doesn't support 16-bit instructions in 64-bit mode. So you have to use a VM or emulator of some kind.

For older games, I run them in DOSBox, but you'd really need an XP VM or similar in order to run Windows apps.