A subscriber emailed me over the Christmas holiday asking if there was a way to run older programs from the Windows 95/98 era on computers today. While you cannot run them on Windows itself, there is a way to make them work inside of Windows.
Prior to Windows XP, the major versions of Windows used a graphical interface over top of a separate operating system called DOS. At a basic level, Windows served as a means to transfer what you did in Windows into commands that DOS could use. Beginning with Windows XP, Windows served as a totally separate operating system that no longer required DOS.
I have had some success getting a couple DOS programs to run in XP, since it contains support for DOS-based programs. However, if you want to run a DOS-based program on Windows Vista or later, you must use an emulator like DosBox.
With any emulator, there will be some programs that will work perfectly, others that may function well but be somewhat unstable, and some will be completely unusable. Sometimes, tweaks inside of DosBox may help a program become more stable. If you are having trouble getting a program to work, you can try searching for instructions on how to make that program work inside of DosBox.
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