Compatibility mode

Dave1776 · 07 Apr 2017

Hi

I have had programs in the past that I love to either use or games to play even some older MS games and they refuse to load on new operating systems.

Why is it when I try and run the program in Compatibility mode for say XP it refuses to run the program. I don't think I have ever had this feature work on any program I have ever tried to run using it.

Like there is an HTML editor I love using and is no longer supported by the program developer as they dumped this version years ago but hate the new version. It ran fine up until a few OS's ago then now when I try and run it and open a file to edit when I go to open the program crashes and when I try and run it in XP Compatibility mode the program crashes.

Why is it Compatibility Mode never seems to ever work?

UPDATE:

I noticed in the program in question ARACHNOPHILIA 4.0 that this is only happened when I try to open a file or folder that is stored on the desktop. If I try to access the desktop to open a folder or file there it crashes the program. If I store a file elsewhere like documents it seems to run fine.

So question now is why would it crash when I try to access the desktop level of my computer or folders and files stored on the desktop?

Dave

dalchina · 07 Apr 2017

How does the in Windows work? - Super User
It's not a perfect emulation, alas. It can help sometimes.

If you want better compatibility, you should try running e.g. XP in a virtual machine.

LMiller7 · 07 Apr 2017

Compatibility mode works for many applications. If it did not it would have been removed long ago.

Applications fail to run on newer operating systems for a wide variety of reasons. In general it is because the application relies on a specific behavior of the older OS which was later changed. Such changes may be the result of an optimization, an added feature, or even a bug fix. Even the most trivial changes can cause problems. Such changes are inevitable in a new OS. Often the reason for failure falls into a specific category and the change can be hidden from the application with an option in compatibility mode. But this isn't always possible.

The only way Microsoft could guarantee 100% compatibility is to change nothing in the new OS. That is clearly impossible.

Be aware that many well written applications created for Windows 95 or even older work without any issues in Windows 10 with no compatibility settings at all.

Berton · 07 Apr 2017

It's always helpful to provide exact/complete names of programs one is trying to run, could be someone else has information pertinent to the problem. For the HTML editor I had to remove Microsoft FrontPage 2003 when I Upgraded to the 64-bit versions of Microsoft Office, wasn't compatible in any way. But I was able to get a good one free from Microsoft, don't know if it's still available.

Dave1776 · 08 Apr 2017

LMiller7 said:

Compatibility mode works for many applications. If it did not it would have been removed long ago.

Applications fail to run on newer operating systems for a wide variety of reasons. In general it is because the application relies on a specific behavior of the older OS which was later changed. Such changes may be the result of an optimization, an added feature, or even a bug fix. Even the most trivial changes can cause problems. Such changes are inevitable in a new OS. Often the reason for failure falls into a specific category and the change can be hidden from the application with an option in compatibility mode. But this isn't always possible.

The only way Microsoft could guarantee 100% compatibility is to change nothing in the new OS. That is clearly impossible.

Be aware that many well written applications created for Windows 95 or even older work without any issues in Windows 10 with no compatibility settings at all.

Well I have tried almost every older program using compat mode and even Age of Empires which is an MS game refuses to work in Compat mode. Literally no program I have ever tried it for has worked. I have even tried different windows versions in it and none work.

Dave1776 · 08 Apr 2017

Berton said:

It's always helpful to provide exact/complete names of programs one is trying to run, could be someone else has information pertinent to the problem. For the HTML editor I had to remove Microsoft FrontPage 2003 when I Upgraded to the 64-bit versions of Microsoft Office, wasn't compatible in any way. But I was able to get a good one free from Microsoft, don't know if it's still available.

Well my case my editor was

Arachonophilia 4.0

When I installed it the other day to try it it ran OK but the minute I tried to open a file it would crash which is what is started to do several OS's ago. Always worked fine in Win XP and prior and I tried compat mode for XP and prior and same thing just crashes every time even when I have installed it on prior systems (Newer then XP) same thing it crashed same time frame when I tried to open a file.

Dave1776 · 08 Apr 2017

I was just testing this with this program again and it seems so far it only crashes if I happen to be trying to access the desktop where I have my websites folder stored So I guess I can just move the folder to a different location and then have to access that folder via the drop down but so far seems to work but weird it crashes when I try to access the desktop? This is the only program where I have been getting this sort of crash