Shadow Lord
Veteran Member
Whoa, whoa what is this? Are you saying Win 8 x64 allows you to run 16bit apps? That would be tres cool... BTW: Win 7 and Vista x32 have both supported 16bit apps. It was only removed in the x64 version...
- VCF South West - June 14 - 16, Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas
- VCF West - Aug 2 - 3, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
- VCF Midwest - Sept 7 - 8 2024, Schaumburg, IL
- VCF SoCal - Mid February 2025, Location TBD, Southern CA
- VCF East - April 2025, Infoage Museum, Wall NJ
-
Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
How to Survive the Windows 8 transition without experiencing chest pains
- Thread starter Agent Orange
- Start date
Whoa, whoa what is this? Are you saying Win 8 x64 allows you to run 16bit apps? That would be tres cool... BTW: Win 7 and Vista x32 have both supported 16bit apps. It was only removed in the x64 version...
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Silly boy! Win8 x64 is just like Win7 x64 in this respect--no support for 16-bit apps. You can, however, install VirtualPC, the same as you could in Win7 and earlier.
Shadow Lord
Veteran Member
I got a bit excited when he said "put back in" since it was only removed from x64.... Oh well...
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Well, NTVDM wasn't so much removed as it was "left out". Microsoft evidently didn't see any point in reproducing the functionality in the 64-bit version.
DOS lives on!!
Veteran Member
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
Chuck(G)
25k Member
You know, sometimes third- fourth- and fifth- party tech forums are like the old game of "gossip" --by the time information gets to the post that you're reading, it's been corrupted beyond redemption. Look at this post, which is actually referenced by the microsoft.com forums.
Did you get this part? This feature is only present in 32-bit edition of Windows 8.
Get it? Microsoft didn't add any 16-bit suppport; they just gave you a way to turn it off in 32-bit Windows
Did you get this part? This feature is only present in 32-bit edition of Windows 8.
Get it? Microsoft didn't add any 16-bit suppport; they just gave you a way to turn it off in 32-bit Windows
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
I noticed it, but my previous post was simply in regard to saving time. If one posts a URL with information, it is helpful to others to show what it says, so they can avoid the sometimes long delay in getting to that web site themselves. As for Windows7 and instructions for clicking through a bunch of menus with a mouse, I couldn't care less myself.
PS: It's ironic that it took me close to half an hour to get to this screen. The VCF server is currently on low power operation and I'm too far away, I guess.
(Wish me luck in submitting the post now.)
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Maybe I was too strident, but expecting Microsoft to do anything for 16-bit users is like hoping that the Easter Bunny will leave solid gold eggs for you.
It's ironic that one can run DOS, Windows 3.1 or even Windows 98 under 64-bit Linux DOSEMU without issues.
It's ironic that one can run DOS, Windows 3.1 or even Windows 98 under 64-bit Linux DOSEMU without issues.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
Well, here's a shot for you. When you initially setup W8 and figured it would be a good idea, like me (not known for a lot of good ideas lately), to install Microsoft's Hyper-V, you can not run VMware on the same machine. VM will not install and it will tell you so. So you say you will just disable or uninstall Hyper-V, not so fast. Once it's in, it's in, and it looks like nothing less than a complete reinstall of W8 will fix the problem. So, what are the options? For me it will be a crash course in how to install virtual Xp on a W8 system running Hyper-V. I'm sure there are some crack IT/programmer types on this forum that have already been there on this. And if so, how about a little help. Moral to this story is "Don't be checking little boxes when you don't know what you're doing". Merry Christmas.
More precisely, they began to disable NTVDM by default. I think they did it partly because it triggered old code in the Windows kernel that was a source of security bugs.
Last edited:
Chuck(G)
25k Member
One wonders if the tradeoff will prove to be worth the complaints from customers who think that their copy of Windows is broken...
krebizfan
Veteran Member
They could have the complaints now or they could keep running 16-bit code now and have the complaints after the inevitable migration to 64-bit OS when 16-bit goes away. Gentle encouragement to corporate accounts to upgrade their code to 32-bit and finally retire 16-bit programs while allowing 16-bit programs to be run if absolutely necessary.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
So why not a 16-bit app sandbox? Running XP in a virtual box is hardly better, no?
krebizfan
Veteran Member
But to work with the corporate blended systems with lots of prebuilt software hooked together with flimsy links the 16-bit sandbox needs to have many holes punched through so the 32-bit pieces running on 64-bit OS could connect to the 16-bit pieces. Miss one hole and the entire structure will fail. The more holes added the easier it becomes as an entry point for unwanted software to the system. Instead, all the 32-bit and 16-bit pieces can wrapped together inside a single virtual machine insulated from the rest of the system. Microsoft's various virtual machine solutions (and competitors too) can handle that and can run pure 16-bit applications as well. Maybe using a virtualized XP to run a single tiny DOS program is wasteful but a dedicated NTVDM for 64-bit computers would be a lot of code effort for little gain.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
I saw that link before, but I don't fully trust the procedure - too many no-no's associated with this. I think it's time, for me anyway, to learn something new.
Last edited:
I wonder if you can run VirtualPC though. I thought I saw some virtual PC integration in a previous version of windows for a similar task. It was slow though since to run the app it had to load a small vpc type environment first. I'm sorta over the 16-bit thing since at work I've been on Windows 7 64-bit lately. We had a lot less 16-bit applications than I was fearing. The main thing it broke were some utilities I wrote and compiled in quick basic 4.5. I tried out a 64-bit port of qbasic but I didn't like it at all, it runs in it's own little environment and by doing that it disables my ability to copy and paste the output. I just ended up rewriting the stuff in other languages or scripting languages.
So for me and I think a lot of others we might be more used to not running 16-bit apps than we think although I certainly would love it if I could.
It's funny though, MS is sorta on that double edged sword. They've been getting grief for their OS being huge and slow and I've seen folks complain about how there's too much legacy code dragging the OS back. I've never felt that way and have been pretty appreciative of their efforts.. I mean you can run dos programs from how many years ago on 32-bit OSes still?! That's not often heard of by any other software vendor or OS. Now of course they go ahead and look towards the future and drop support (not really sure why, I guess it's more difficult than it sounds for whatever reason) and they still get grumbles. Well I guess that's predictable from this community though.. being we're all vintage computer users lol so perhaps other tech groups that don't do vintage tech like the idea.
So for me and I think a lot of others we might be more used to not running 16-bit apps than we think although I certainly would love it if I could.
It's funny though, MS is sorta on that double edged sword. They've been getting grief for their OS being huge and slow and I've seen folks complain about how there's too much legacy code dragging the OS back. I've never felt that way and have been pretty appreciative of their efforts.. I mean you can run dos programs from how many years ago on 32-bit OSes still?! That's not often heard of by any other software vendor or OS. Now of course they go ahead and look towards the future and drop support (not really sure why, I guess it's more difficult than it sounds for whatever reason) and they still get grumbles. Well I guess that's predictable from this community though.. being we're all vintage computer users lol so perhaps other tech groups that don't do vintage tech like the idea.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
I just don't know--maybe the answer is more modularity. I run 8- 16- 32- and 64-bit applications on my Linux box. The 8-bit ones are, of course, run via emulation, but the 16-bit ones are compartmentalized away from mounts where they might wreak havoc. 32-bit WINE suffices for the Windows apps that I use. I do have XP installed in VirtualBox, but I haven't had to use it.
I'm old and set in my ways, perhaps.
I'm old and set in my ways, perhaps.
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
Amazingly WINE will run a full Photoshop install as well - I've done it.