Does 16 bit work yet on a 64 bit windows 10 OS?

Useful advice. May I add another caveat? I use an old 16bit DOS prog in dosbox under Win 8.1 64bit. Works very well too. However, until fairly recently I also used to use an old 32bit Windows prog which I have migrated al the way from Win 3.1x! I ran it under Win XP and Vista 32bit.

Even though this is a 32bit prog, it will NOT run under Win 64. All to do with the setup exe file which uses a 16bit installer. So this issue could still trip people up trying a 32bit prog in a 64bit environment.

Many older 32 bit applications use 16 bit installers which cannot run on a 64 bit OS. But Windows does offer a partial solution. If the installer is recognized as one of a few popular ones Windows will substitute an equivalent 32 version. But there are many 16 bit installers and many applications implemented their own.

Lee said:

One question: how much ram are you running (what came with the computer). The reason (you may know this already) is if you came with 8 gigs or more of ram then it is now setting there doing nothing for you. 32 bit OS will only use 3.2 gigs of whatever you have in your computer.

I find it odd my system came with Windows 7 64 bit pre-installed before I did a clean install of windows 7 64 bit. It only has 4 gb of ram, so it really doesn't matter if I use a 64 bit or 32 bit operating system. I came across some 64 bit Linux distro that wouldn't work on this system but the 32 bit did, go figure.

LMiller7 said:

The internal differences between 16, 32, and 64 bit operating systems are enormous. 32 bit systems do not have some automatic capability to run 16 bit applications but something that must be designed and built in. And it isn't simple. 64 bit versions of Windows have the designed in capability to run 32 bit applications, but not for 16 bit applications. The design of the CPU makes this difficult but not impossible. If Microsoft had ever intended to support 16 bit applications in a 64 bit OS it would have been in 64 bit XP or Vista at the latest. With each passing year 16 bit applications loose more popularity and there is less reason to support them. For those who need 16 bit support they can still choose a 32 bit OS. But don't expect that to continue indefinitely either. The last 32 bit server OS was Server 2008. Server 2008 R2 and later versions have only 64 bit versions. At some point in time this will happen for client versions as well.

This might come as a surprise to some but Microsoft does not have unlimited resources. With each new OS they must make difficult decisions about what new features to implement, what features to be put on hold, and what old technology will no longer be supported. Resources devoted to supporting 16 bit applications means that new features that will benefit more people need to be delayed. This is often necessary but it cannot continue indefinitely.

On 64 bit linux version I ran was Ubuntu 14.04.1 and I installed Wine and was able to run some 16 bit applications. Is Wine really that hard to make? For some reason Ubuntu is the only 64 bit distro that works on my system so far.

groze said:

Does 16 bit work yet on a 64 bit windows 10 OS? I did an reinstall of windows 10 but choose 32 bit image instead of windows 10 64 bit. I found out my 16 bit program works, once a windows feature is enabled. I did have a driver issue but fixed by a windows update.

16-bit applications (installers, etc.) will not run natively under 64-bit Win10TP (or Win8.1 or Win7, etc.) As others have mentioned, you can run emulator software like Dosbox that will allow you to run 16-bit applications & installers under 64-bit Windows (my version of dosbox-svn includes a 64-bit version of dosbox.exe that's pretty cool.)

There is no "yet" to it, in reference to your question--this will not ever happen and it is by design. 32-bit versions of Windows are backwards compatible (to some extent) with 16-bit programs and applications; 64-bit versions of Windows are backwards-compatible with 32-bit programs and installers. At some point in time Microsoft will no longer be offering 32-bit versions of its OSes at all, but until then a 32-bit version of Windows is a necessity if you want to run 16-bit applications & installers...(but the preference is that you run a 64-bit OS and use emulators to run older 16-bit programs.)

Back in the 16-bit Windows era all applications were not pure 16-bit applications but often a combination of 8-bit & 16-bit code that was compatible with Windows at the time--itself a combination of 8-bit and 16-bit code. 64-bit cpus offer superior security features to 32-bit & earlier cpus, and they have more internal registers, and will support vastly greater amounts of RAM.

If you have a 64-bit cpu then I'd advise you run the 64-bit version of Windows with it and use emulators to run any 16-bit software you may be clinging to for some reason... Unless you have some kind of mission-critical 16-bit program that you absolutely and without a doubt must use on a regular basis, which will not run on any software emulator you know of, then I'd advise you migrate to 64-bit Windows ASAP.

Is Wine really that hard to make?

YES.

Emulating a proprietary operating system without access to the source code is always very difficult. Even if source code access was available the licensing terms specifically prohibit using it for such purposes. Wine has been under development for more than 20 years, is still incomplete, and has many compatibility problems.

DosBox is a 32 bit application that runs on either a 32 or 64 bit OS. It is free and can be obtained here:
DOSBox, an x86 emulator with DOS

Note that this only runs DOS applications, not 16 bit Windows applications.

Lmiller 7, I misunderstood Waltc, I didn't read it correctly. I assumed Waltc compiled dos box 64 bit version that ran windows 16 bit programs. I was wrong, sorry.

LMiller7 said:

DosBox is a 32 bit application that runs on either a 32 or 64 bit OS. It is free and can be obtained here:
DOSBox, an x86 emulator with DOS

Note that this only runs DOS applications, not 16 bit Windows applications.

waltc said:

16-bit applications (installers, etc.) will not run natively under 64-bit Win10TP (or Win8.1 or Win7, etc.) As others have mentioned, you can run emulator software like Dosbox that will allow you to run 16-bit applications & installers under 64-bit Windows (my version of dosbox-svn includes a 64-bit version of dosbox.exe that's pretty cool.