Trying to run old application

Under Vista Home Premium SP1, I'm trying to run an application that was written for Win3.1.

Most of it works OK, except when I use a command which tells it to acquire an image from a scanner. I am asked to select my twain source, which I do, but then the scanner gives a couple of grunts and a message box from Vista says "Twain.dll Client's 32-Bit Thunking Server has stopped working". I close the box, am told to check for Windows updates, and finally (when I try clicking around on the application) that "NTVDM.EXE is not responding" and I have to close the application.

I have no alternative twain sources to try, just this scanner source.

The scanner works fine with other (modern) applications.

Grateful for any ideas.

hi giomach, I dont know if this will work with 3.1 being so old but you could have a look if you right click on your program and select properties it may give you a compatibility mode option where you can run the program as an earlier version of windows. You might have to run it as 16bit as well i am not sure?

Thanks for taking the trouble to respond. But actually most of my tests have been made in Win95-compatibility mode. (The old application works in Win95.)

Most functions of the old application work in Vista too, it only fails when I ask it to scan a page. The program which is reported as having "stopped working" is c:\windows\twunk_32.exe version 1.7.1.0 ("Twain.dll Client's 32-bit Thunking Server"), which I assume is being called by the old application in connection with scanning. Although not authored by MS, I believe this program came as part of Vista (please someone correct me if that is wrong), and so did NTVDM.EXE. So it looks to me as if Vista has mechanisms to run old applications like this, but they are not working on my machine.