Windows 7 64bit, Windows XP Mode.

Pierre3400 · Feb 16, 2012

Hey guys,

Yesterday I finally got around to playing with Windows XP mode at work.

I run a Windows 7 Pro 32bit on my office pc, and we had issues with out labels machine, it just doesn't like windows 7, so i installed the software and printer on Windows XP Mode, and that worked great! First time!

Then we got a CAD machine, running Windows 7 Pro 64bit, this rig doesn't need the labels program, but we also use another program. This is an old 16bit bookkeeping program, that runs off our server. Its a very important program for us, as it contains all and any info about out products. This program runs in Command Promt and runs fine with a few tweaks on Windows 7 32bit, but soon as we get to a 64bit rig, this all changes.
This is a .bat file, and like mentioned runs in Command Promt and is a 16bit.
We have tried using Dosbox to run this program, and it works, not great, but it works, apart from the fact that the LPT ports for our printers don't work threw Dosbox.
This is why i wanted to try out Windows XP mode on the CAD rig, so it was installed, and setup to load the network printers and then I tried to run the .bat file, it ran without any issues at all, the printers worked, everything worked! So that was just perfect.

Now to the real issue. The program works when running threw the virtual pc with XP, any software installed on in XP mode comes on the list Start>Programs>Windows XP Mode>Program Name>Program, but since this program we run (the .bat file) is stored on the server and run only launched threw Windows XP, how would i go about making this a short cut on the Windows 7 desktop, so that is launches other software threw the virtual XP mode?

It there a way?

i5guy · Feb 16, 2012

Windows XP Mode

I see many people have problems with XP Mode. I use all my XP programs on XP machine. My New Windows Home Premium 64 Bit I will use Only Windows Seven Programs. I talk to Many Techs. They all Tell me Have 2 Computers, 1 XP Machine for XP Programs and 1 Windows Seven Machine for Win 7 Programs.For 750 to 1000 dollars you can have 2 Computers. This way no Problems at all.

David · Feb 16, 2012

Pierre3400 said:
Hey guys,

Yesterday I finally got around to playing with Windows XP mode at work.

I run a Windows 7 Pro 32bit on my office pc, and we had issues with out labels machine, it just doesn't like windows 7, so i installed the software and printer on Windows XP Mode, and that worked great! First time!

Then we got a CAD machine, running Windows 7 Pro 64bit, this rig doesn't need the labels program, but we also use another program. This is an old 16bit bookkeeping program, that runs off our server. Its a very important program for us, as it contains all and any info about out products. This program runs in Command Promt and runs fine with a few tweaks on Windows 7 32bit, but soon as we get to a 64bit rig, this all changes.
This is a .bat file, and like mentioned runs in Command Promt and is a 16bit.
We have tried using Dosbox to run this program, and it works, not great, but it works, apart from the fact that the LPT ports for our printers don't work threw Dosbox.
This is why i wanted to try out Windows XP mode on the CAD rig, so it was installed, and setup to load the network printers and then I tried to run the .bat file, it ran without any issues at all, the printers worked, everything worked! So that was just perfect.

Now to the real issue. The program works when running threw the virtual pc with XP, any software installed on in XP mode comes on the list Start>Programs>Windows XP Mode>Program Name>Program, but since this program we run (the .bat file) is stored on the server and run only launched threw Windows XP, how would i go about making this a short cut on the Windows 7 desktop, so that is launches other software threw the virtual XP mode?

It there a way?

I wonder if you can explicitly call the XP Mode cmd to run the .bat?

i.e.:

C:\path\to\the\command\prompt\cmd.exe \\server\batchfile

??

Pierre3400 · Feb 16, 2012

i5guy said:
I see many people have problems with XP Mode. I use all my XP programs on XP machine. My New Windows Home Premium 64 Bit I will use Only Windows Seven Programs. I talk to Many Techs. They all Tell me Have 2 Computers, 1 XP Machine for XP Programs and 1 Windows Seven Machine for Win 7 Programs.For 750 to 1000 dollars you can have 2 Computers. This way no Problems at all.

This is just not a usefull solution for us. We mainly use 32bit Windows 7 Pro, where this is not an issue, but we have 64bit machine, and ontop of this, we might aswell look at the future. The program we use, cannot be replaced, we have tried, it didnt work out! So the best solution is to figure a way to keep it running on newer machines.

David said:
I wonder if you can explicitly call the XP Mode cmd to run the .bat?

i.e.:

C:\path\to\the\command\prompt\cmd.exe \\server\batchfile

??

Well i sat with guy yesterday who is a bit more geeky then me at OS's, we went threw the registry and found that windows its giving the program unique labels for XP mode e.g "||23n2ajnk" All the codes have || and then 8 characters.

We tried to use a desktop way to do it, as in, place an icon from within XP mode on the W7 desktop. We used Media player for this, as in, we want to use media player classic from XP with a launch in XP mode, on the windows7 desktop, this just made a short cut on the W7 desktop to the Media player that comes with Windows 7.

Along with the look in the registry we tried to setup our own adjusted "copy" of the way XP mode makes programs launch for the XP mode installed programs, when this was done, it startes to launch XP mode, but then just gets stuck there.

So it got me wondering if anyone else had tried same issues, with a 16bit program and XP mode launch.

SteveLord · Feb 16, 2012

So the bookkeeping program needs to print labels? Is that correct?

I hate to recommend this....but how about a VM (vmware or virtualbox)? I know you're sort of doing this already.

I am very familiar with the "old ways" that only work on XP. As an IT guy here, my take is you either find a new way to do it that works...or you continue to do it the old way, but now have to go through a few additional steps or clicks to make it work.

Mostly everything works in one way or another on Windows 7. But sometimes you need to bite the bullet and upgrade whatever it is holding you back. Get the stubborn people out of their comfort zones and move on. You can't hide from it forever. :\

I will give everything a solid effort here, but I also have my limits...and better things to spend my time on eventually.

i5guy · Feb 16, 2012

You can always Upgrade Your Program for use in Windows 7 System. Many Companies are Starting to Upgrade because of all the Problems with Windows XP Mode. In the Long run it's a good Investment Anyway.

Pierre3400 · Feb 17, 2012

SteveLord said:
So the bookkeeping program needs to print labels? Is that correct?

I hate to recommend this....but how about a VM (vmware or virtualbox)? I know you're sort of doing this already.

I am very familiar with the "old ways" that only work on XP. As an IT guy here, my take is you either find a new way to do it that works...or you continue to do it the old way, but now have to go through a few additional steps or clicks to make it work.

Mostly everything works in one way or another on Windows 7. But sometimes you need to bite the bullet and upgrade whatever it is holding you back. Get the stubborn people out of their comfort zones and move on. You can't hide from it forever. :\

I will give everything a solid effort here, but I also have my limits...and better things to spend my time on eventually.

From the get go, no, this has nothing to do with a labels program. The Labels software is working 100% like i should. The issue is our complete bookkeeping program that is an old 16bit program.

There is no replacement software that works as well as this.

As far as virtual programs, DosBox as i have mentioned is as close as we can get to a working solution for running on 64bit machine, but since we have networked printers, and they are linked with our bookkeeping program on LPT1,2,3 Dosbox was never made to go as far as working with networked printers, and i have spent many hours trying to solve this issue with mods for dosbox and so on, nothing works or has ever worked.

i5guy said:
You can always Upgrade Your Program for use in Windows 7 System. Many Companies are Starting to Upgrade because of all the Problems with Windows XP Mode. In the Long run it's a good Investment Anyway.

The program we use, the company that made it, does not exist any more, and there for no updates. On top of this, the software we have is so heavily modded duo to the fact that the company boss is an old programmer.

Instead of looking for replacement solutions on the software side, i'd rather have people with experience on a similar issue express knowledge on this matter.

SteveLord · Feb 17, 2012

Pierre3400 said:
Instead of looking for replacement solutions on the software side, i'd rather have people with experience on a similar issue express knowledge on this matter.

XP Mode was an awesome idea, but poorly marketed by Microsoft. Probably because they too knew it was not all that great. Anticipating issues like yours in my office, I was very interested in it for a long time. Luckily, all my issues with software/hardware and Windows 7 have been minor.

Our database program was abandoned by it's creator. It uses Sybase and built from Powerbuilder. Good luck finding people savvy with that. Right now we're nearing the end of a project to replace it. Hope to go live by summer. But during this time, more features with the database app have become broken. We would be severely screwed if something major were to happen.

Anyway, like I said...you can run from these issues, but you can't hide. Good luck in coming up with something.

Pinky · Feb 17, 2012

I'm going to agree with Steve, the BEST solution is to find a new solution for the book keeping. IMHO anything you're running from a command prompt in an old 16 bit environment (whatever it is) can be easily replaced with some creative use of MS Excel, plus excel would be twice as robust in utilizing that data in other ways should the need arise.

I understand your frustration in wanting it to just work, but realize that depending on 16bit to be supported indefinitely is not a good strategy to apply to your business' IT model. It might even be worth manually moving that data in order to get 'unstuck', even at the cost of a couple painful days or weeks of data entry. In the long run it will open doors to better use of that data, and possibly in ways you would not imagine now.

Windows 7 64bit, Windows XP Mode.

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