Running Nonnative Applications in Windows 2000 Professional

Windows 2000 allows applications to communicate with computer hardware only by way of the core operating system. This maintains the robustness of the system. This feature can be a problem for applications not designed for Windows 2000 because they sometimes use device drivers that attempt to communicate with computer hardware directly. To protect the integrity of the core operating system, Windows 2000 prevents such drivers from running.

Applications that require either Windows 2000–compatible device drivers or an upgrade to a compatible version include those that:

• Communicate directly with hardware (for example, a fax card, scanner card, or terminal emulation card).

• Rely on their own disk device drivers (for example, an application that increases hard disk capacity).

• Communicate directly with disk drives (for example, a disk maintenance application).

• Use their own graphics device drivers to communicate with the hardware (for example, an application that uses a custom printer driver).
  
  Note
  If your application requires, but does not supply, a Windows 2000–compatible device driver, contact the manufacturer. The manufacturer might have developed a version of the application that is fully compatible with Windows 2000.