Help With Old Software

ralcala90 · Mar 3, 2014

Hello, our business recently lost an old PC running a very outdated 32Bit Version (This thing might have been from 2000 or older) however, this old PC was able to install some Electronic Part Catalog CD we had from before 2000. Worked great, when it crashed we lost access to that information.

So skip to my issue, we purchased this PC

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/pavilion-slimline-desktop-4gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive/3199387.p?id=1219088677005&skuId=3199387&st=Hp%20slimline&cp=1&lp=2

which comes with Windows 8.1, we have a version of Windows 7 32 Bit Pro CD w/ Product Key that we have been attempting to instal onto the PC (We partitioned the hard drive and already made a separate drive for it) However whenever I try to instal from the disc, it tells me that Windows encountered an unexpected error and to restart the download. This continues to happen despite multiple attempts to install.

After some research I discovered that Windows 8.1 has compatibility features which allow it to run older programs (Discovered after installing another older PC program which installed fine)

So I am running into the problem of trying to instal Windows 7 Pro and being unable to, as well as being unable to install my old EPC (Electronic Parts Catalog), is this due to the PC not being 32 Bit? I was led to believe that Windows had a compatibility feature with 32 Bit Programs.

When I try to install my EPC is simply says 'This App Cannot Run on This PC, please contact software writers for an appropriate version'

I've been scratching my head for a few days now so I'm turning to you in hopes to get some answers, thank you!

Rafael

skit75 · Mar 3, 2014

Many 32-bit applications at or around that time were actually compiled with 16-bit installer packages. If that is the case, you would be in trouble with a 64-bit CPU.

ralcala90 · Mar 3, 2014

Ah, so in other words what you suggest is that perhaps since my disc is so much older, it is attempting to install via 16-bit, as opposed to 32-bit?

skit75 · Mar 3, 2014

almost...

The application is very likely a 32-bit application as you suspect. The software that copies the application files into Windows, does prerequisite checks & isolates memory for the install is probably 16-bit.

ralcala90 · Mar 3, 2014

skit75 :

Ah yeah, thanks for the help with that, at least it leads me one more step towards a solution. Is there anything I can do about this? Perhaps an emulator? I have the same software installed on another PC that is still running, perhaps I can copy the files over?

skit75 · Mar 3, 2014

There was a time when you had to install programs using command line entry and configure new hardware manually setting IRQs and port ranges. At some point, Microsoft wrote software to do all this for you (Installer packages) that pretty much every piece of software now uses. Software developers integrate this installer package into the application to ease the pain on the end-user. 16-bit installers for 32-bit programs were not a problem when desktop PCs all had 32-bit instruction sets. Now, all new CPUs are multi-core 64-bit capable.

Your best bet is to build this workstation with all 32-bit hardware if this is the cause... which we certainly don't know, for sure.

There is no emulator that I am aware of.... a coder might be able to recompile the program with a 32-bit installer perhaps but, I believe that might be a stretch.

ralcala90 · Mar 3, 2014

skit75 :

There was a time when you had to install programs using command line entry and configure new hardware manually setting IRQs and port ranges. At some point, Microsoft wrote software to do all this for you (Installer packages) that pretty much every piece of software now uses. Software developers integrate this installer package into the application to ease the pain on the end-user. 16-bit installers for 32-bit programs were not a problem when desktop PCs all had 32-bit instruction sets. Now, all new CPUs are multi-core 64-bit capable.

Your best bet is to build this workstation with all 32-bit hardware if this is the cause... which we certainly don't know, for sure.

There is no emulator that I am aware of.... a coder might be able to recompile the program with a 32-bit installer perhaps but, I believe that might be a stretch.

Thank you very much, you've been a tremendous help

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