Running old DOS programs on XP?

[Stu]

I went out to a small business today who have a really old 286 computer running DOS.

They have some ancient (1990 I think the guy said) Sage Accounts software that their customer base is stored on, and nothing is backed up.

It looks like the hard drive is starting to get a bit flakey, which is worrying them a great deal.

Problem is, all this DOS stuff is way before my time.

Would it be an issue to extract the .exe and customer database and run it from a command prompt in XP, or is there more to it than that?

Thanks

Stu

 

[Rodel]

well...maybe...maybe you should give it a try... God bless...

 

[Stu]

well...maybe...maybe you should give it a try... God bless...

I would rather research the issue before I fubar an already flakey drive.

 

[Tweak]

I'd start by imaging that drive or copying the files, something before it is too late to get what is needed without more advanced methods. Most of the time you can just copy the folder which for apps like that often seem to be a single folder installed (really essentially extracted) to the root of C, then it is can be run a lot of the time without much issue. Also if you could offer a bit more detail on the software perhaps we might better answer your questions, Sage Software isn't specific enough to be certain what you are using unless someone happens to know exactly of it.

Checkout the list of possibilities and you'll understand why I say please provide more details.

Main thing is you need that data backed up ASAP regardless of anything else.

 

[MrUnknown]

If needed, you could load up DOS inside a Virtual Machine, should run fine in there.

 

[NYJimbo]

If they really dont want to go into the 21st century at least clone the drives onto something small (20 or 40 gb drives) build some low-end-pentium/AMD 586 box, put DOS 6.2 and whatever ram it takes to make it work and at least they have new hardware that is faster.

Moving them to XP will be alot of work because they are not used to it and there is no guarantee their app will work under that o/s unless its been proven to do that already.

 

[JosephLeo]

DOSbox should be able to handle all you DOS emulation needs.

 

[ithinkyou5.0]

damnit joseph beat me to it DOSbox is perfect for running old dos programs in xp and should be relatively easy to use if the customer is familiare with dos already.

 

[rusty.nells]

The current Windows CLI is similar but not the same as DOS. I agree with NYJimbo, clone the disk and put it in a newer machine.