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The System Requirements of the application says it needs:

Windows 3.1 or higher
VGA graphics adapter or higher
Windows display driver set to small fonts

My system has:

Windows 7
Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset Family

When I try running it, the program opens up fine but displays a popup that says it "will not run in this video mode, you must run in a Small Font mode". It gives no other option other than "OK" which closes the program.

I have tried using the windows 7 compatibility option "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings".

I have not been able to find any answers on how to get windows-7 to run an application in "Small Font mode".

Help would be appreciated! Thanks.

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  • I suspect this is something that doesn't exist in newer versions of Windows. I would completely disregard the requirements on a application this old - hardware wise you'll easily meet them and software/OS/drive-wise it's entirely a compatibility problem. You might have more luck running this software in a virtual machine or via something like DOSBox.
    – DMA57361
    Aug 21, 2010 at 21:02
  • That sounds like something that would be easy to NOP out for a guy with the right tools. (Meaning, to replace the code that exits the program with code that does nothing and lets the app continue to run). Is it a publicly available program you're trying to run?
    – zildjohn01
    Aug 22, 2010 at 22:55

2 Answers 2

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you're going to have to run it on a virtual machine , if you had it running on winxp, install windows xp mode addon free from ms.

this allows you to run ye old apps as windows xp, but as your application is for win3.11 you may need to install virtual box, then dos6.22, then windows 3.11 and finally your app.

its also possible you need to drop the resolution down to 640x480x256colours that will require a utility to do it as the control panel doesn't let you normally go below 800x600

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  • visualised -> virtualized ?
    – user12889
    Aug 22, 2010 at 22:55
  • Windows 7 has some compatibility options, but as a whole, a virtual box is the best way to go. We should note that software made in the 90's is a little dated. See if there is a more current version which is compatible with windows 7. If there isn't one available, you might think about creating a stand alone box to just run your legacy apps. Aug 27, 2010 at 20:48
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Try changing your default font size in the Display control panel applet. Set the size to "Smaller - 100% (default)". That should correspond what was "small fonts" on Windows 3.1.

It's possible that the application is just incompatible with Windows 7 and doesn't correctly determine the font size.

alt text

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  • blink Is that Arial?
    – Hello71
    Aug 22, 2010 at 22:52

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