DOS Program in Vista

[GTifeld]

Hi,

I have a friend who just got a new PC with Vista Home Basic. He's using an
old DOS program that worked under XP, but doesn't appear to work properly in
Vista. When I execute the program, it comes up with the error message "This
system does not support fullscreen mode. Choose 'Close' to terminate the
application." My choices then are "Close" or "Ignore". Whichever option I
click on, the program will then run, but in a miniscule window that I can't
alter.

Any ideas on how to get this to run in fullscreen like it did before? I'm
working on getting him to join the 21st century, but in the interim, I'd like
to make this work...at least temporarily. Thanks in advance for any
suggestions.

 

[Malke]

Hi,

I have a friend who just got a new PC with Vista Home Basic. He's using an
old DOS program that worked under XP, but doesn't appear to work properly
in Vista. When I execute the program, it comes up with the error message
"This system does not support fullscreen mode. Choose 'Close' to terminate
the application." My choices then are "Close" or "Ignore". Whichever
option I click on, the program will then run, but in a miniscule window
that I can't alter.

Any ideas on how to get this to run in fullscreen like it did before? I'm
working on getting him to join the 21st century, but in the interim, I'd
like to make this work...at least temporarily. Thanks in advance for any
suggestions.

IIRC, I don't believe DOS programs will run full screen in Vista. I could
certainly be wrong about this, but it might be better for your friend to
look into virtualizing instead, either with Virtual PC, VMware, or DOSbox.

Malke

 

[GTifeld]

Thank you, Malke. I will look into those. Do you recommend any particular one
over the others?

 

[Malke]

Thank you, Malke. I will look into those. Do you recommend any particular
one over the others?

Well, I have only used DOSbox briefly for games but not on Vista. I've used
Virtual PC (free) and VMware (not free) and much prefer VMware. But that's
just a personal preference. Since VPC is free and USB isn't going to be
involved with DOS, you might want to give that a try. There's a newsgroup
for VPC and VMWare has forums.

microsoft.public.virtualpc

Malke

 

[Malke]

VMWare Rocks! But IIRC the free VMWare Server version was not supported
on Vista as a host the last time I checked (at least not on Vista x64) -
that may have changed since I checked though. You'll just need to do
some homework to see if any of these solutions will even work on Vista
Home Basic (VPC does not look like it will and I have no experience with
DOSbox).

Virtualization really is a sweet technology, I couldn't get by without
it (FWIW - I use VMWare Workstation on Vista x64, but it's not
inexpensive). Good luck, let us know if you find anything.

I can tell you that VMware does work on Vista HP but I don't have the free
version; I have VMware Workstation for PC (and VMware Fusion for my Mac).
So obviously I like VMware. ;-)

Malke

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Thank you, Malke. I will look into those. Do you recommend any particular one
over the others?

Innotek's VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) is a freeware virtual
machine solution that works well on Vista. (I prefer it to Virtual PC,
but your tastes may vary.


--

Bruce Chambers

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