OTVDM / wineVDM project for running 16-bit Windows (Win16) apps on 64-bit modern Windows!

[xpclient]

For those of you who missed it, a great new project called OTVDM/wineVDM started some time ago. What is does is it emulates 16-bit Windows ecosystem/Win16 on 64-bit Windows using WINE libraries. It works similar to Windows' built-in NTVDM in 32-bit Windows. Google for 'otvdm' and read the first page on the domain columbia dot edu. There is now an easy to use installer for it too.

Note that this is for 16-bit Windows applications, not DOS apps for which you can use DOSBox which is a first class emulator with great performance on modern hardware.

OTVDM is a better solution for running Win16 apps than installing Windows 3.x in DOSBox or any Virtual Machine as there is no guest OS. It is still a massive work-in-progress as more functions and libs from WINE are ported to it however a lot of old 16-bit Windows games, old Microsoft Home abandonware apps, 16-bit installers already work on 64-bit Windows 10! The project also makes use of Intel's Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM) which is a hardware-assisted virtualization engine (hypervisor) but it has to be enabled from the INI config file. That makes OTVDM run many times faster than the software CPU emulator which otherwise has NTVDM like performance.

Check out this great project. Also 32-bit and 64-bit EXEs are obviously not affected. That opens up a huge library of old software on modern Windows. What was old is new again. What was dead is alive again.

Note: I am not the developer of this project. I just found it a few months ago. Not sure if it's in the rules to post a link to it so I am only posting info about it.

[viper]

Thank for this info. xpclient
I have been running my (2) favorite 16-bit apps in Win10 x86.
Once x86 goes away I'm sure this project will be very popular.

[xpclient]

Which might be soon as MS announced after 2004, OEM releases of 32-bit Windows will stop

[xpclient]

Update just FYI for anyone trying this project and wondering how good the compatibility is with old 16-bit first party / Microsoft apps. Here are the Win16 apps from the BetaArchive FTP that I have been able to install and run natively on 64-bit Windows 10!




Some are pure 16-bit while some are hybrid 32-bit & 16-bit titles, or where installer components are 16-bit. As of the latest build of OTVDM, all of these work mostly fine. Some old 16-bit Microsoft Office apps also work though not all (not included in this list).

Older 16-bit or hybrid Microsoft Bookshelf versions (94, 95, 1996-97, 98) and Microsoft Encarta (94, 95, 96, 96 World Atlas, 98, World Atlas 98) titles also run fine.

[CSmeds99]

I hope that this project would have it where all 16-bit Windows programs would use the Windows 10 style interface just like under the Windows 10 32-bit version. But with the program icons in the task bar instead of the old Program Manager icon, and without a console window each time you open a program. You have to edit the shortcut's path in order to put the otvdmw.exe path before the program .exe in order to not have a console window being open each time.

[FurretFunny]

Microsoft Bob actually runs on it, despite the issue in the guide chooser where Rover appears to be stretched out.