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| Thread ID: 83222 | 2007-09-24 04:11:00 | Vista versus XP versus DOS | Thomas01 (317) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 594403 | 2007-09-24 04:11:00 | When I update to a new computer then I know I will have to accept VISTA. But I still use several programs (including the best ever 2D drafting program) written for Windows 3.1 In addition I even use DOS based programs. Particularly my FAMILY tree. After all its dead simple and I can have the whole program and the family trees of about 6 families all carried on one old fashioned 3.5 floppy. ASEASYAS spreadsheet handles some work I find no Windows spreadsheets will look at. Why change. Under XP I found there was no problem. Some minor work to ensure reasonable compatibility and that was it. But VISTA I am told will NOT run these programs. I believe DOS can be run on a seperate disk and there is some arrangement for win3.1 etc It all seems a bit complicated and I would like to know what others have found and how they manage this type of situation. Tom |
Thomas01 (317) | ||
| 594404 | 2007-09-24 04:42:00 | You can emulate DOS in Windows pretty easily with programs like DOSbox etc. Compatibility mode in Vista only goes back as far as Win95 so cant be much help there sorry. | Pete O'Neil (6584) | ||
| 594405 | 2007-09-24 04:50:00 | When I update to a new computer then I know I will have to accept VISTA. No you won't, not if you have a computer custom-built. You can specify that WinXP be installed if you wish. Unless you are talking about in three or four years time. WinXP may not be available from retailers then. |
FoxyMX (5) | ||
| 594406 | 2007-09-24 04:57:00 | DosBox (dosbox.sourceforge.net) | wratterus (105) | ||
| 594407 | 2007-09-24 05:02:00 | You could run virtual PC and put your DOS/Win3.1 under that, but then it will still be pretty easy to put in a small (few GB) IDE drive in your PC, and install DOS and Win3.1 onto that. Most motherboards now have a boot selection prompt (press F10 or some other button) so you wouldn't even have to do any playing around with windows boot manager or anything (unless you wanted to) You could also make a small partition on your normal disk, although personally I find a separate physcial disk easier to manage and plus if you had SATA you probably couldn't use that for DOS anyway. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 594408 | 2007-09-24 23:11:00 | OK I am getting good advice . Can I use it? Dunno . But I do not think my new computer is coming for about 12 months . I feel I should get VISTA - must stay up with the action! But I am used to having a spare hard drive in my computer which I use for automatic backups, which happen every morning at 11am . So I presume I could order this spare drive and then partition it to be both a backup and have DOS and Windows installed (I'll have to use Win98 as my Win3 . 1 seems to have gone walkabout) . Then use F10 for dual booting . I think it is F8 on this computer! But I must admit it seems a little clumsy - hasn't anybody tried using VISTA to get access to earlier programs without rebooting? How am doing teacher? Tom |
Thomas01 (317) | ||
| 594409 | 2007-09-24 23:17:00 | If you really don't want to reboot, just download microsoft virtual PC (it's free) and install your windows 98 onto that. It'll run on XP and Vista | Agent_24 (57) | ||
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