Windows Vista has some changes from previous versions of windows and some of my older programs that use graphics would not work. For example old programs that had been compiled years ago with Borland C++. The error message is from the 16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem and says "This system does not support fullscreen mode."
So what can I do? I still have some useful tools that I would like to continue to use.
There are many references to workarounds involving updates, changing drivers, and registry edits and such. Several proposed workarounds come with a cost of much reduced functionality and features.
In my opinion, only one proposed solution / workaround was any good, and that was the DosBox program (by the way, there are versions for MAC and linux and ...)
I did have difficulties with the full screen mode of the DosBox program, and so I tend to never use it. Instead I set up my windowed view of my graphics to be big enough to see clearly.
It took me awhile to figure the proper configuration file entries for how I wanted the application to run on my system. Click here for my configuration file (dosbox.conf) (as a text file and for version 0.72). (Click here for my config file for version 0.73.)
I didn't want any cpu clock cycle limitations and such. I also wanted to double the graphics window size, because otherwise I found it to be too small.
Example screen shot from my old graphics program running under DosBox:
Not that it is relevant, but the resulting saved graph from that program:
