gfretwell wrote:

It also seemed to kill a lot of old 32 bit windows software that will
not even run in compatibility mode. XP did not seem to have a problem
with any of my old stuff except dBase that wants to do direct writes
to the disk.
DOSBOX to the rescue.

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Win%203.1%2...207%20suit.jpg

"The 64-bit OS". Which one is that? Since you posted in a Windows XP
newsgroup, are you talking about Windows XP x64? That really isn't
Windows XP. Because of the pressure to get out a 64-bit workstation
version of Windows, Microsoft cheated. They crippled Windows 2000
Server x64, put on the Windows XP GUI, and called it Windows XP x64.
Many programs won't run on server platforms, so they wouldn't run on
Windows XP x64 aka Windows 2003 Server crippled with alternate desktop.

All NT-based versions of Windows do not permit direct hardware access.
They aren't 9X-based with switching between the 9x- and DOS-kernels. If
you want to run something that wants direct memory access, you need to
run it inside an emulator. DOSBOX is one. VirtualBox and VMplayer are
VMMs (Virtual Machine Managers) in which you would run a DOS guest OS
(e.g., FreeDOS) in a virtual machine on your Win7 host OS.