Good Afternoon,

I work for an IT department for a courier company we have began the process of updating our systems to windows 7/8/8.1 but unfortunately we have program that is 16bit. There is no way for us to not use this program and the possibility of the people it concerns creating a new version is looking bleak. As windows xp is ending it's life cycle we require that we get new computers with new operating systems. Here is the run down: We cannot use a different program we have to use this one which is a 16bit program. We do not want to use a 32bit OS that may support 16bit because either it will be a security risk when xp ends or it is just not future proof as it can only use a maximum of 4GB of RAM. We have attempted to use DOSBox to emulate the process which works but on this business program we cannot see when anyone else is using it (this has to be available knowing when others are on the program) Also we require support for it to print from the program. The software is kept on a mapped network drive (server) so it is all pulled from there into dosbox but this still does not work. We have tried most possibilities hoping for some fresh inspiration.

Kind Regards

Chris Wright
IT Department

Chris

Glad you found your way here. 

The only "solution" I can think of is to run the application in a VM running a 32-bit edition of Windows.  Yes, it is wasteful and does not really solve your issue, but legacy setups like this does not interest MSFT.  Believe me, I feel your pain as I have similar limitations with legacy software that is no longer supported.

• Proposed as answer by ZigZag3143xMVP, Moderator Saturday, November 30, 2013 5:52 AM
• Marked as answer by v-yozhuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Wednesday, December 04, 2013 8:21 AM

To reinforce what Darien has said, bear in mind that Windows x64 has not been able to run 16 bit software since Windows XP x64 came out almost 10 years ago.

There is no way for us to not use this program

It's really LONG past time to re-evaluate whether you should continue to base your business practices on such severely outdated, unsupported software.

I don't want to be too blunt, but if in 2013 your organization hasn't yet made moves to upgrade business processes based on 16 bit DOS applications then whoever has responsibility for business systems planning really isn't doing their job and your company might benefit by replacing them with someone who's more aware of reality.

Frankly, depending on the necessity to continue to run 16 bit DOS software, even Windows 8 is still available as a 32 bit build (though I can't say whether it will run all ancient 16 bit DOS applications), so even though it's not as "future-proof" using a modern 32 bit OS may be a way you could go for now.  Then you could migrate to the 64 bit variant when the ancient software is finally retired.

Only other thing I can think of is that maybe you could wrap the DOS program with a batch file or script that sets up a semaphore of some sort so that you can "see if others are using it" in their DOSBoxes.  It's not hard to imagine each user's software creating a semaphore file named after their user ID in a given network folder, then if you want to see who's got the application running just look in that folder.

 

Microsoft seems to have some intentions to promote or help maintaining Dosbox.

www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/CompatCenter/ProductDetailsViewer?Name=DOSBox%20DOS%20Emulator&vendor=DOSBox&ModelOrVersion=1&Type=Software&tempOsid=Windows+8.1

It looks as Microsoft would look at Dosbox as the official MS-way to go !! There is even a "Microsoft" higher version (1.0) as the version shown at the original homepage of Dosbox (version 0.74)

As for printing is concerned , there is no problem to print on usb interface printers.

www.dos2usb.com  (or others, like www.printfil.com )

I dont know if that will work, but you might try  32 bit Windows 7,  in a 'dos-window' (command prompt).

My old  dos.exe  applications still work perfectly well on Windows XP in the 'dos-window', without any additional software. (Of course you might probably have to work in a reduced screen area, which however remains  sufficient)

Like Noel already wrote even Windows 8 (32bit) could be tried, to test compatibility for your Dos application.
He is aware of reality of course, neverheless unable to answer that question as well :
"Frankly, depending on the necessity to continue to run 16 bit DOS software, even Windows 8 is still available as a 32 bit build (though I can't say whether it will run all ancient 16 bit DOS applications)"

I've looked at that link and around the web, and did not see a 1.0 version of DosBox that could be downloaded.  Can you let me know if and where you found a download for that?

Thanks,
Dave