Will MS-dos application run on windows vista?

Answer 1

Vista’s approach to application compatibility is very much the same as Windows XP.
Any application can be run in compatibility mode, whereby Windows emulates an earlier operating system (Windows, obviously) to try and get things running. It’s almost like virtualisation - the host OS presents the client with a hardware configuration it thinks it can handle.

In Vista, compatibility is managed by right-clicking on either the main application EXE, or a shortcut to that EXE, and then click the Compatibility tab.

Vista can emulate anything from Windows 95 to Windows 2003 SP1, all of which is very funky, but none of which directly helps you with DOS.

In fact for DOS apps, the only one of any help is “Run the program as an administrator”. This is actually very necessary - DOS had a very direct approach to hardware and knew nothing of user accounts or security, whereas Vista seems to run on little else.

source:
http://www.apcstart.com/4047/how_to_coax_retro_dos_games_to_play_on_vista

regards,
Philip T

Answer 2

Most of them won't even run on XP, so it is highly doubtful.

When I upgrade to Vista, my McAfee Security Center won't even work any more . . .
Dos is dead.
I have a laptop dual partitioned with Win98 and Dos 6.22 and I can't even find Dos drivers that will work for the Crystal audio sound card.

Answer 3

yeah