Vista - installing an old piece of software on VISTA Home Premium SP1 64bit

Hi all,
Have a question on installing an old piece of software on VISTA Home Premium SP1 64bit. The interesting thing is this software is installed and running on Win XP Media Center 2005 SP3 and runs like a watch. However attempts to install on my VISTA machine prove futile. I get the following message:
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...rorMessage.jpg
The disk itself states for Windows 95/98/98SE/NT ( I know this is old stuff) copyright 2000. I don't know apples from oranges about code and I'm definitely not a code monkey; but wonder if it has something to do with the way the program was written? Could it have been written in 16bit code? Like I said it installs and operates on a 32bit OS. Any ideas greatly appreciated.

I have tried running as Administrator and it makes no difference.....same message appears.
Jakeman97

Hi all,
Thanks for looking. I also tried the "Windows Compatibility Wizard" and it was a nogo no matter what I did. Soooo, after much Googling and many dead ends, I finally tracked down the current company that owns the software (not the original publisher) and they cannot make it work in VISTA either. Claim they are working with Microsoft on some kind of patch. I will say this for them though they were honest enough to put this fact in 'red letters' on their Google ad. I missed it first time around. I'll just use it on my XP machine.
Thanks for the help
Jakeman97

If it's trying to install a driver, that driver would need to match the "bitness" of your OS. For a 64-bit OS, all kernel-mode drivers must be 64-bit. No exceptions. All compatibility shims and tricks will fail.

Likewise, if it has any 16-bit code, it will fail outright in 64-bit Vista, irrespective of whether the 16-bit component is a driver or anything else.

If you want to test what happens under 32-bit Vista, you can download "Virtual PC" from MS. Then, do a 32-bit Vista install inside the VM and check how the app behaves. If it works, you can contemplate switching over your primary installation to 32-bit if the app means a lot to you... or you could just continue to run it in a 32-bit VM.

Hi H2SO4,
Thanks for the reply and information. I'm betting this program has 16bit code in it. Reason, the disk states it will work in Windows 95/98/NT copyright 2000. I know Win 95 ran 16 bit code. This program will not run at all in any version of VISTA and the current company that now owns the software admits it freely and is working on a patch. IMHO, I believe the code will have to be rewritten to function in VISTA. I will continue to run the programs on my XP machine and be happy with that.
Thanks again for the input,
Jakeman97