ms dos program won't work with vista

Question

I have an old ms dos program that has worked under every version of windows through win xp but now I have a computer with Vista home premium and I get an error message that says:  this system does not support fullscreen mode.  choose "close" to terminate the application.       I checked the properties screen for the exe file and made sure full screen was not checked.  I have already tried dosbox but my keyboard won't work with that program.  Any suggestions for me?  thanks

Answer 1

JO336,

Have you tried to emulate dos with a program like DOSBOX or something like that. I have been sucessful running dos applicaitons with this in which will not run in Vista.

Here is a link to the site.

http://www.dosbox.com/

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MCP. MCDST. LVL 80

Answer 2

hi linney

thanks for all the suggestions.  I tried all of these but they just don't work.  I have two wired keyboards but neither would work for me.   Also tried the onscreen keyboard but that wouldn't work either.  I have resigned myself for the time being to not using this program.  maybe it would be better to pick up an old computer at a yard sale.  thanks again  jo336

Answer 3

XP Home, Vista Home Premium etc. are not supported by Microsoft as host machines for Virtual PC, meaning that you are on your own and don't ring Microsoft if you have problems, but there are plenty of people who run Virtual PC in that configuration without any problems.

You can also look at third party freeware such as VMware.

http://www.google.com/search?q=vmware+free%2Bvista&rls=com.microsoft:*&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

You say you tried DosBox but had keyboard problems.  Do you have another non-USB keyboard that you can try.  Would it be too awkward to use something like the On-screen Keyboard via pressing the Windows Key + U?

Answer 4

Hi Linney

thanks for taking the time to respond to my query.  I tried the compatibility wizard but still kept getting the error message about the system not supporting full screen mode.  I tried to download the virtual pc but i got an error message that my version of vista is not supported.  I have an intel core 2 duo machine, 4 gigs ram, using windows vista home premium.

Answer 5

Have you looked at the various compatibility modes available to you, especially the display settings?

Make older programs run in this version of Windows

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/bf416877-c83f-4476-a3da-8ec98dcf5f101033.mspx

Another option if you have an old Windows CD that you no longer use, is to employ something like Virtual PC and install that in Vista, and install your old operating system in Virtual PC, and run it from that in Vista.

Virtual PC 2007

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=04d26402-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&displaylang=en&tm