I have a CD of Visual J++ version 1, and a new laptop that’s running Win2K Professional. I can’t install J++ from the CD because it says I need Windows 95, or Windows NT 4.0 or higher.
Obviously, Win2K is higher, but the install script doesn’t recognize that.
I could try just copying everything from my old laptop (which was NT), but I don’t have it with me right now, and I was wondering if there’s some nifty way to fake out the install program so that it will install this old software on Win2K.
You can try to run the install program in compatibility mode. Create a shortcut to the install program and take a look at the Compatibility tab in Properties for the shortcut. There is still no guarantee the program will install or even work, but it might be worth trying.
Hi ForbiddenFruitSalad, thanks for the info. I just tried that but unfortunately it didn’t work. (I tried all three campatibility layers: 95, 98, and NT.) It was a good idea, though!
That is really odd because Win2000 = NT5. The NT programmaing team called it NT5; it was a marketing decision to call it Win2000. BTW, using 16 bit programs on my Win2000 laptop is very chancy and often requires a reboot. In fact, I found NT4 much more stable.
Can someone tell me what is this compatibility mode? I looked at a couple shortcuts and there was no compatibility tab. I tried help and while there were a few listings on compatibility, none of them said anything about compatibility layers.
Using 16 bit programs is inherently chancy because they are designed for a chancy environment. If at all possible, you’d be wise to replace them with modern alternatives. But there’s probably something wrong with your Windows 2000 system if you find it less stable than NT 4. I’ve been running Windows 2000 since it was in beta and it has been rock solid.
As you may know, the problem with most programs written for Windows 9x (in particular games) is that they will check for NT and basically give up if it is found; it was a niche market many developers could not afford to support, and it lacked many consumer-friendly features. Unfortunately, this meant that despite the fact that Windows 2000 might very well have been able to run these programs, it couldn’t because they refused to run on anything claiming to be NT. This was a source for a lot of Windows 2000 compatibility problems.
To combat this, Microsoft had a system for application-specific compatibility fixes pretty early on, and have also provided quite a few such updates (primarily through Windows Update). The compatibility features I described earlier was introduced later, I’m not sure exactly when but I believe it was in one of the service packs. Make sure your system is fully updated.
It’s important to understand that the compatibility layer isn’t anything like an emulation. Basically, it’s an attempt to trick the application into thinking it’s running under Windows 9x or NT 4 (there’s actually more to it than that, but not much). If the application is designed to use specific features of one of these older operating systems it probably won’t work anyway. And that’s likely why ratatoskK was unable to install Visual J++ 1.0.
Hi again everyone. Number, thanks for the info, I will try that next time I have the machine booted up.
Just to clarify the scenario, when I execute “setup.exe” from the installation CD, I do get the Welcome / Menu screen with a couple of choices listed, among them “Install J++.” When I click “Install J++”, after about two seconds I get the message saying I have the wrong OS, and it exits the setup program.
So I don’t know much about Win2K vs NT, but it seems to me that the setup program is able to start, but something within the install script is checking for some OS indicator that isn’t “faked out” by usng a compatibility layer.