Thursday, April 23, 2009

Why no more 16-bit support in Windows 64-bit?

It seems kind of weird that Microsoft removed support for running 16-bit programs on 64-bit Windows. Even in Windows 7 32-bit, 16-bit programs are still supported. How different can the code be? Why is the 32-bit version written but not ported to 64-bit?

The following article explains why

Virtual 8086 mode

It is AMD and Intel who removed support for 16-bit on 64-bit. Code for 16-bit support on 32-bit must be re-written in order not to use the Virtual 8086 mode.

Does this mean that my QuickBasic programs will never see the light of the day again? Or will Windows 64-bit one day support 16-bit again (by bundling DOSBox maybe)?

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