Installing Software on Vista

Now33

Whilst out shopping this week at the supermarket I bought my son some educational software made by Dorling Kindersley. It would seem from the box that the software is a number of years old (copyright date on the box is 2002), but says it can run on Windows 95 through to XP. When buying I assumed that there would be no issues loading this on to vista, yet having tried I can't install it.

Any ideas on a way round this?

keggies

I'm afraid I'm not a great "techie" but I do know to certain degrees "Vista" is a law unto it's own. Having brought a new sytem with Vista I found it would install and play "Call Of Duty2" but not "Band Of Brothers".

Why I've no idea, I've also found this happens with some other software that I have tried to use. Some just seem to work fine and some don't - Why?

Chippy_Minton

See http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/bf416877-c83f-4476-a3da-8ec98dcf5f101033.mspx, the paragraph starting 'If you cannot install a program..'.

What error, if any, do you get when you try to install it? What is the software?

Now33

Chippy_Minton wrote: »

See http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/bf416877-c83f-4476-a3da-8ec98dcf5f101033.mspx, the paragraph starting 'If you cannot install a program..'.

What error, if any, do you get when you try to install it? What is the software?

The software is some childs educational software. I don't actually get an error message and the compatibility wizard doesn't help either. Any other suggestions?

Conor_3

Browse to the CD ROM and run the programs setup in compatibility mode and as Administrator.

Conor_3

keggies wrote: »

I'm afraid I'm not a great "techie" but I do know to certain degrees "Vista" is a law unto it's own. Having brought a new sytem with Vista I found it would install and play "Call Of Duty2" but not "Band Of Brothers".

Why I've no idea, I've also found this happens with some other software that I have tried to use. Some just seem to work fine and some don't - Why?

Because the software that works has been badly written and won't function correctly without Administrator Priviledges. No software except that which needs to interact at system level should need Admin rights, especially a game. Sadly because user accounts on XP were automatically created as admins and people never changed them, the software writers were able to get away with sloppy programming.

Then there's the installers that won't install on a version of Windows they don't recognise. They pin Windows for a version number, Vista returns 6.00 and they don't allow installation - again bad authoring.

Now33

Conor wrote: »

Browse to the CD ROM and run the programs setup in compatibility mode and as Administrator.

I have tried this and still no joy with this. I guess this is just one of those things with Vista. Up to now I have had no problems but I can now see why people are sticking with XP

PaulK_3

Sooner or later software and hardware manufacturers are going to have to bite the bullet and deal with the situation. We had the same issues with the transition from 98/ ME to XP. Lazy coders and lazy driver writers at the hardware manufacturers causing issues that are then blamed on the operating system.
Why are we blaming the OS when it clearly stated it was compatible with systems up to and including XP? Vista has a completely diferent core code and behaves very differently to other operating systems in an attempt to protect the end user from malware etc being installed and run.

Conor_3

Now33 wrote: »

I have tried this and still no joy with this. I guess this is just one of those things with Vista. Up to now I have had no problems but I can now see why people are sticking with XP

However, it's not Vista that's the problem.

Conor_3

Now33 wrote: »

I have tried this and still no joy with this. I guess this is just one of those things with Vista. Up to now I have had no problems but I can now see why people are sticking with XP

However, it's not Vista that's the problem.

Out of all the software I have, there's only one thing that won't install because the installer looks for specific versions of Windows.

Some state they've only been tested up to Windows XP 32bit but they install and work fine.