There is a very old program called Expert Personal Roots which I would like to install on my Windows XP computer. However, when I put the floppy disk into the computer a small screen appears saying “Press any key”. I press a key on the keyboard and nothing happens and the program will not proceed past this point. Can you help?

As Expert Personal Roots is quite an old program it is not surprising that you are having compatibility issues using this software on Windows XP. There are some posts on forums which seem to indicate that other people have also experienced problems when attempting to run this software on Windows XP, with various error messages appearing. Making matters more difficult is that it appears the makers of Expert Personal Roots are no longer in business, so there would be no updates or support for running this software on Windows XP. As it seems that we are on our own with regards to this problem we will work through some generic troubleshooting steps for situations where legacy software will not work on Windows XP.

Start by running the Program Compatibility Wizard. This utility is designed to assist in running software designed for earlier versions of Windows which may be incompatible with the latest version of the operating system. Go to the “Start” menu > “Help and Support”. In the Help and Support Center window that appears, click “Fixing a problem” (in the left-hand menu) and then “Application and software problems”. In the main part of the window under “Fix a problem”, click “Getting older programs to run on Windows XP”. Read over the instructions and click the “Program Compatibility Wizard” link to launch the Program Compatibility Wizard. Click the “Next” button. On the screen asking you to locate the program, select “I want to locate the program manually” and click “Next”. Browse to the location of the program on the floppy drive. Once the location has been defined, click “Next”. The next screen will allow you to select a compatibility mode. This is an operating system which previously allowed the program to run correctly. Select the last operating system under which the program ran correctly. Should this be a DOS based program, select “Microsoft Windows 95” as that is the closest to DOS from the list of selected applications. Having selected the compatibility mode, click “Next”. You will now be asked whether you wish to apply any special graphics settings to the program. Given the age of the software I suggest that you tick all the options – 256 colors, 640 x 480 screen resolution and disable visual themes. Click “Next” to advance to the next screen. This final screen will confirm the settings which you have chosen. When satisfied with these settings click “Next” to test whether they work correctly. Provided the settings do work correctly, and allow Expert Personal Roots to correctly execute, then return to the compatibility wizard to permanently apply these settings to the program.

In the event that the program does not work correctly you may need to do some manual configurations to enable compatibility. Open My Computer or Windows Explorer and find the executable file for the program. Right-click on the file and select “Properties”. From the Properties window that appears for the file select “Compatibility”. Tick the box “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and select “Windows 95”. Leave all the Display Settings unticked, as ticking them on the last attempt did not seem to fix the problem. Click OK and then double-click on the program executable to run. If it still does not work correctly, go back into the “Compatibility” tab for the file and try different variants and combinations of the settings – such as Windows 95 with some of the display settings ticked, Windows 98 with all the display settings ticked, Windows 98 with none of the display settings ticked, etc. Hopefully you will find a combination of settings which allows the program to successfully load.

Be aware, there is always a chance that Windows XP will be unable to run the software due to compatibility issues where there is no workaround. The reading I have done on various forums seems to confirm this may be the case, so if you are unable to get the program working by changing the compatibility settings then you most likely will not be able to get the program running through Windows XP.

However, there may be an alternative. If Expert Personal Roots is a DOS-based program, which is a possibility since I have read on forums that some people appear to have the DOS edition of this software, we could try using an emulated DOS environment to run the program. There is a free piece of software called DOSBox, which is “a x86 emulator with DOS”. This software will emulate (imitate) a DOS-based environment within many other operating systems, including Windows, Mac and Linux. DOSBox is specifically designed to allow older-DOS applications, particularly games, to be run on modern computers with modern operating systems. DOSBox is available for download from the website: www.dosbox.com . Be aware, DOSBox is primarily targeted at enthusiasts so it is not the easiest pieces of software to install and learn. However, there is excellent documentation on their website and available on the internet so I would encourage you to treat this as a learning experience and work through the installation to see whether using Expert Personal Roots through DOSBox will work. You can find the DOSBox documentation at: www.dosbox.com/wiki/Main_Page .