Are your Windows 95 apps not running under XP? Tim Dean goes through a few tricks to help you get it running.
When Microsoft released Windows XP back in 2001, one of its main features was its broad compatibility with applications, old and new. However, there are still a great number of older applications and games, mainly written for Windows 95, that refuse to run under XP for one reason or another. If you're having trouble firing up an old program or a classic game, all is not lost, as Windows does have a number of useful built-in utilities to get things running again.
The first thing to do is make sure your system and drivers are as up to date as possible. It's also worth checking the software developer's website to see if there's an update that could fix the problem. Unfortunately this isn't always feasible for applications and games that were released a long time ago, where the developers may not be supporting it any more, or they may have even disappeared all together.
If you know everything is up to date and the program is still not working, then it's time to get down to business. Many applications are compatible with Windows XP, but they were coded with other operating systems in mind, and fail when they come up against a Windows XP-specific feature. For example, some older installers aren't prepared for long file names, such as 'Program Files', and try to truncate it to 'PROGRA~1', which can cause problems. Other programs try and install things in the Windows or Windows/System folder, but unlike Windows 95, the system folder is called System32 in XP. The app might also try and install 16-bit drivers, or change the system.ini or win.ini files, or it might just poll the operating system to make sure it's Windows 95. Some of these things are unrecoverable, such as if the application requires 16-bit code. Other things are easily fixed, such as if the application just won't run because the OS is not specifically Windows 95.
The first port of call in resolving these compatibility issues is Windows' Compatibility mode. Find the EXE file for the program you're trying to run, right click, and go to the Properties. In the Compatibility tab you'll find a number of helpful options. First off, you can have Windows 'lie' to the program and tell it you're running the version of Windows it expects. If you know the program ran under Windows 95, try setting it in the 'Run this program in compatibility mode for:' drop down list. If you get other problems, like graphical glitches, you can also try each of the Display settings options.
With these enabled, XP will intercept certain program commands, such as the notorious GetVersion and GetVersionEx APIs, which ask what operating system is being run, and will feed the program the information it expects as well as directing it to use XP's file structure.
If that still isn't enough, you can try uninstalling the program, and reinstalling it - except this time run the setup.exe using Compatibility Mode. That might insure that the files at least go into the right directories.
When running games, one more thing to try is setting either video or audio acceleration to None, or different levels of acceleration.
If all this fails, then you can delve a little deeper with a utility that's actually hiding on your Windows XP install CD. It's called the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT), and it's in the Support/Tools directory. The installer is act20.exe, or you can jump on to the Microsoft site and download the latest version.
The ACT will install a number of applications, but the one you want is called QFixApp.exe. When you first fire up QFixApp, you'll need to browse for the application that is causing you grief. From there you can experiment with a number of compatibility fixes. The Layers tab gives you access to a number of compatibility modes, which group together multiple individual fixes for a particular operating system or issue, such as colour depth or themes. On the Fixes tab, you can see a complete list of compatibility fixes, and can manually enable or disable them.
Choose a compatibility mode from the Layers tab, and hit the Run button. This will fire up the app in question, and if there are problems, QFixApp will try and apply a fix. If everything works, you can check the log in QFixApp to see exactly what fixes it applied. This is especially handy if you want to rollout the app on a number of similar systems. To do this, click the Advanced button, and then the Create fix support button. This will create a file in Windows/AppPatch with the same name as your app, but with an extension SDB. You can then copy that to other systems and double click it to install the necessary settings in the registry to run the problem app.
You can also use QFixApp's logs to streamline your compatibility fixes. Browsing through the log file you might see a fix that is only needed for Windows NT or 2000, in which case you can disable that fix, which sometimes improves performance.