I have been using PC's ever since the original IBM PC. I upgraded my home
computer to Win7 (32 bit), and so far it has run all of my software dating back
years and years. I haven't found anything it won't run.
WinXP used to have the options of running programs in different compatibility
modes. I don't know if Win7 has that or not. You could right click on the
shortcut used to execute the program and it had a way to choose if you wanted
to run it as a WinXP program, Win98 or even Win95.
Depending on what version of Win7 you have, you can download from Microsoft and
install WinXP in a virtual machine, and then it should run any PC software ever
written. I have seen consumer-level computers advertised with the 64 bit
version of Win7. I have no idea why they would sell a machine like this to
consumers, first since consumers don't typically need the advantages of the 64
bit OS and second because the 64 bit OS will certainly not run any 16 bit
software, whether that software was written for an old version of DOS or one of
the early Windows versions like Win3.1. That is why MS came up with the option
of using WinXP in a virtual machine, because that is how you would run the
older software in the new 64 bit OS.
If you have older IDE hard drives, they are old enough that they SHOULD NOT be
used for anything important. The era beginning about 10 years ago was one of
the worst in terms of hard drive reliability. The industry seems to have
recovered and most newer SATA drives are better. I don't know about your old
machines but my newest computer still has IDE ports on the motherboard, so if I
really wanted to I could connect an old IDE hard drive to it. Our company
bought 5 custom computers in about 2001, each with 2 hard drives, and within 3
years 9 of the 10 hard drives had failed and been replaced. Four years ago we
chunked those computers and bought 5 new ones. No hard drives have failed in
those computers.
> I really did not want to buy a new computer as I have 3 presently. Two
> have Win XP and one with Vista. All the new one have Win 7 and all my
> software would not work on that... Plus my extra hard drives are the
> old sytle and won't plug into a new computer without adapters!
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