Does Windows XP work with SW 4.4?

[Stuart Thiessen]

Hi, Mark!  As far as I have been able to determine, SW 4.4 will only work on
Microsoft operating systems from Windows 98 on down.  Windows NT 4, Windows
2000, and Windows XP are all designed different than the old DOS system that
Windows used to use.  Windows 3.1 -> Windows ME are still "DOS-friendly".  I
think the key challenge with SW 4.4 is the fact that in the old DOS days
when this was written, DOS programs regularly sent commands directly to the
video card through various codes available to DOS.  That "loophole" was
closed after Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.  That is why it
does not work on the later Microsoft operating systems.

It does however, work with Virtual PC on the Mac as Valerie has said, or on
xdosemu on a Linux operating system since both will capture the DOS commands
being sent to the video card and translate it to the appropriate command for
the Mac or Linux operating systems.

One possibility if you have someone with some technical expertise, you can
set up a new partition on the hard drive and install FreeDOS on that
partition and set up her machine with two operating systems.  Not the
preferred solution, but it should work for being able to do SW4.4 and
Windows XP should be able to read that partition and get any exported files,
etc. that you create during the time you are using DOS.  If it is too much
of a pain to re-partition the hard drive, maybe go to a used computer store
and buy an old used hard drive.  Then install it in the computer but put the
FreeDOS on it.  That is another way to approach it.  Then tell Windows XP
that you want to boot in two different operating systems.  I don't have XP
so I am not sure how to tell it to do dual boots.  I know it is possible to
set up a dual boot in Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000.

Thanks,

Stuart

on 09/30/2002 8:11 PM, Mark Penner at penner at WORLD.CBI.ORG wrote:

> Ms. Hagiwara, from Japan, is trying to run SW on her Windows XP operation
> system and having trouble. It works on her laptop with Windows ME, but not
> in XP. On XP, she gets the opening screen, but when she tries to open a
> file, nothing happens. The screen just stays the same. Is this a common
> problem? Any ways around it? Anyone have any ideas?
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>
> ***********
> Mark Penner
> Tokyo, Japan
> ***********