Windows 10 'end of service' message.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Use a virtual OS? But are there any killer apps only on MSDOS these days?

[charles]

some 5 years ago, I inherited a membership data base which ran on a MSDOS program bought in 1998. The person I got it from said he couldn't find anything as good on Windows. I managed to extract the data and stored it on RISC OS!

[John Rumm]

Win 10 does not support 16 bit code natively. However you can run any number of virtualised dos machines to solve the problem.

Win 10 (pro) comes with the Hyper-V hypervisor[1], and you can install DOS on that. Failing that you can download DOSBox or VMWare Player, or Virtualbox and use one of those.

[1] Hyper V does not officially come with 10 home, but can be enabled and installed :

[Ian Jackson]

In message [e-mail]>, AnthonyL [e-mail] writes

I was donated a W7 64-bit PC. I wiped it and re-installed the W7 64-bit, then did the free upgrade to W10. However, I forgot that my main email/news, Turnpike, is only 32-bit. I got around this by installing Virtual Box, but after a few months this wouldn't run. The reason was that VB only works up to W10 1909, and the latest W10 update (to 2004?) had killed it. Fortunately, there was an easy reversion to 1909, and to prevent any more updates screwing things up again I have locked the version to 1909.

In the meantime, this XP machine seems to plough on without too many problems. That said, Firefox and Palemoon now have problems with my bank accounts, and I have to use the last version of Chrome that works on XP.

[Steve Walker]

VMware Workstation works fine on Windows 10 20H2.

[Bob Eager]

Could also try Hyper-V, since all you have to do is tick the box to install it.

[GB]

I can see no harm in surfing the web or writing to usenet on an XP machine, provided it isn't part of a botnet. But, you run your banking on an xp machine?!

[Ian Jackson]

Interesting. Thanks. I might give it a go on another machine,

[Ian Jackson]

I recall I had a problem with Hyper-V (I believe the processor is too old). [I'll have to check my notes.] I did get around it somehow.

[John Rumm]

doing "systeminfo" from a command line will give a snapshot of Hyper-V requirements right at the end.

e.g:

Hyper-V Requirements: VM Monitor Mode Extensions: Yes Virtualization Enabled In Firmware: Yes Second Level Address Translation: Yes Data Execution Prevention Available: Yes

Some of those may need to be enabled in the BIOS if not showing up once the OS has booted.

[Ian Jackson]

Computer says "No" to the first three, and "Yes" to the last. [Yes - it's actually coming back to me now (been there, done that etc)]

AIUI, and IIRC, for this ageing PC and its elderly processor, the BIOS doesn't/can't support Hyper-V. But somehow I found a workaround (possibly using an older version of Virtual Box?).

[John Rumm]

Yup other programs including their own hypervisor can work without the same requirements as Hyper V.

Hyper V has extra capabilities to play nice with other virtualisation systems as well now. So you should be able to run Hyper VMs alongside Virtualbox or VMWare VMs and things like Windows Subsystem for Linux.

[Paul]

You can't do this forever.

All VM products must "bow down" to Hyper-V.

In the future, whether you run VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation, they must all run as "Hyper-V clients" on Windows 10. Windows 10 is to leave Hyper-V running at all times. That's some sort of plan.

The Windows 10 Upgrade Advisor, is going to tell you to remove any VM product versions which are not compatible with the "new story".

You might see this behavior during 2104 Upgrade install on Win10. I was asked to do this during an Insider Upgrade, remove my VirtualBox 5, and that's the heads-up I got that this is coming.

Since the computer industry is full of copy/paste, Linux could do similar things at some point. The difference is, the hardware requirements under Linux might be different. Maybe it won't need SLAT.

Can you run the new Windows 10 version in a VM, on Linux, with its fancy new "requirement" ? It's probably going to need working nesting, no matter which directions you work in. A little too complicated for me to figure out.

When I war just a lad, we used to nest VMs. I can't remember if it was SoftWindows or something else, we set up an OS within an OS within an OS on one of those things, and it was dog-slow. But the slowness, was because the Guest and the Host ran different instruction sets, and the on-the-fly conversion was slow. Whereas when these changes and the new "Nested World" comes in, the instruction sets are homogeneous (x86-on-x86).

Is it worth doing all of this ? Of course not. It's just an affectation. An affectation to be selling 5GHz CPUs and waste electricity.

Paul

[AnthonyL]

[AnthonyL]

I've got Pro. I see that it is an option and one I am not familiar with so I'll research.

VMWare/Virtualbox however may give me an environment that I can make use of as I have dual Linux/Win10 boot.

[AnthonyL]

[AnthonyL]

Wow, that's what I get - thanks!

[Dave Plowman (News]

Sorry, I learned my computing on the BBC Micro/Acorn. It was there others nicked apps from. ;-)

Are you really saying there aren't modern versions of things like databases?

[Steve Walker]

If you've got complex systems and databases running on them, then you may not want to have to migrate and re-code for newer versions.

The company I am working for still has a specific purpose database running on Access 97. It will not run on newer versions and as it comprises a large quantity of background information, rules, operations and an entire, bespoke front end, it would cost millions and years of work to develop a new version.

[John Rumm]

Its not the database that matters as such - yes there are a multitude of database engines that can access stuff stored in dBaseIII style database tables.

The main issue is usually the application code written in dBase/Foxpro/Clipper etc that turns the DB into a bespoke business application.

Applications like Foxpro and clipper could/would compile an application into a stand-alone DOS executable, and that is not accessible to a modern database engine even if the tables it uses are. In many cases you may not even have access to the original source code. So emulation of the original platform becomes the best way forward.