ntvdm error - dos programs

[KiwiPete]

Hi,

I developed an extensive commercial dos program back in about 1990 and am still selling it today. It is a Microsoft Dos program compiled using Borland Pascal and it uses VGA graphics and I have had no problems running in all versions of Windows since. However the Beta 2 version will not run the program. It comes up with a fatal error in NTVDM.EXE when trying to run the program. Apparently, the Vista Beta II release will not run any full-screen graphics Dos VGA programs. My question is, does anyone know if Microsoft are attempting to fix this problem for the full release, or is my program history ? It is something I need to know as my livelihood depends on it and I need to start thinking about alternatives now if Vista will not support VGA Dos programs.

Regards,

Peter in New Zealand.

[Thunderbolt 2864]

Yep, Microsoft ditched most DOS support for Vista. I'm afraid your going to have to migrate to a 32 bit code.

[fizban2]

16-bit (dos) applications are no longer supported by Vista as thunderbolt mentioned, best bet would be to start upgrading the software, .Net 3.0 just came out, would be an ideal time to start a revision of the software, are you still writing in pascal? or do you code in other languages also, c# vb.net etc?

[KiwiPete]

Hi Guys,

Do you know for certain that MS has ditched NTVDM (NT Virtual Dos Machine) ?

Is there an official announcement to this effect ? It would be great if MS can let us know as there would be millions affected if it just happened overnight. Much more significant than Y2K was ever going to be.

The thing is, the last I heard (before the Beta II version of Vista) is that Dos programs would still run under it.

[LLXX]

The NT series have been known for their bad DOS emulators, and it seems they messed up again with Vista.