Using Windows Virtual PC to run 16-bit applications on 64-bit Windows

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I have had some people ask me whether you can use Windows Virtual PC – with its integrated Windows XP Mode – to run older 16-bit Windows programs on a 64-bit platform.  The answer is “Yes!”.  Here you can see a screen shot of SkiFree running on my laptop:

16bit-applications

In the foreground you can see the error message that I receive if I try to run SkiFree directly on my laptop (which is running the 64-bit version of Windows 7).  In the background you can see SkiFree running under Windows XP mode.

This can be very useful if you have legacy 16-bit applications that you need to use, but want to take advantage of 64-bit computing.

Cheers,
Ben