Topic Title

I have a consistent problem, and will post here to see what ideas the collective may have--

I'm running XP, with a Pentium4, on a Dell Laptop. Most of the time (so much for "consistent") when I try to load a program from a CD, I get a common error dialog box. It will browse the CD, and show the contents, but when I click on setup.exe or use run: e:\setup.exe I get this message: 16 bit Windows Subsystem, C;\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application [Close][Ignore].
"Close" stops the activity, "Ignore" stops the activity. Nothing will actually load the program. It is written for Win95, so tried to address compatibility for Win95; that did not help either.
I am administrator on this system, don't know what else to try.
Ideas?

Do you want to install, or open this program from CD?
On CD all files are read/write protected. So if you want to start a program from CD, and there are changes, for example ini files, database files you have first copy it to the HD.
If the setup doesn´t start, because it is a 16bit application, windows use the wowexec for 16bit software, than use the compatibility mode.
Right click on the exe file, and choose compatibility, (Edit:oh, you had)
Maybe it is a database you have to enter some entries in the autexec.nt and config.nt (files, buffers, path).
Windows 95/98/ME are not 32bit operating systems. They use DOS in the background.
NT4, W2K and XP are real 32bit operating systems. They use the emulation wowexec for starting 16bit applications and emulate DOS.

Here are some infos from microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;324767

Martell

Hello Dwight,

I would try and clean up the Registry with EasyCleaner, and CCleaner. And if you have it, I would also run the One Button Checkup in Norton Utilities.