trying to have 2 PCs on one monitor and have them share a harddrive

yes 16GB will be plenty. And since you just want to run the one 16-bit app, it would not surprise me if your current machine could handle it as well. I would try setting up virtual box now before spending any money on anything.

What o/s are you wanting to run as virtual old version like 2k 98 would only need 512 ram

I guess I would run windows 7 because I have the discs, but I think the program was originally designed for windows 95.

I can set up the virtual box on my current 32 bit system?

johnhoh said:

yes 16GB will be plenty. And since you just want to run the one 16-bit app, it would not surprise me if your current machine could handle it as well. I would try setting up virtual box now before spending any money on anything.

Thank you. I might do that. or better yet, maybe I'll set it up on my home PC running 64 bit and try it there first since that will give me a better idea of how it will work.

Check this video How to Use VirtualBox (Beginners Guide) - YouTube

Thank you. I will play around with it and report back.

I never cared for Virtual Box, it was hit and miss for me. An alternative would be VMware Workstation Player.

Download VMware Workstation Player | VMware

Once you have a virtual machine going, your host, i.e your computer can be 64 bits and you can use more RAM. The guest is the virtual machine.

win7's xp-mode is also an option

Windows XP Mode - Install and Setup

edit: not. just noticed you are on w7 home

Johnhoh: that would be ideal if I can find a copy of 7 pro...of course only if it works well.

so many options now. Thank you all for helping me figure out a way to do this...

Update.


I finally built a new system with 64-bit windows 10, running VMware player and windows 7 32-bit as the guest OS.


there was a lot of learning to get the folders to share across the guest/host divide, but I finally nailed it after many updates from windows and successfully loading VMtools. it also was tricky to get the OS to fill the screen - some sort of screen resolution issue that a lot of other folks seem to struggle with. Finally got that as well. Still can't get the task manger to work, but that is a minor issues that probably has an resolution.



But for now, everything has been working well for 2 days and I am encouraged that this is the answer to being stuck with a 32-bit OS.


thanks to everyone for giving me advice and helping out. I literally could not have done it without you!