A bit of an odd one this !
For historical reasons I run a genuine licensed copy of Sage (Accounting Software) for my personal / self assessment tax that dates from the Dark Ages - suffice it to say my original distribution copy is on four floppy disks. It is 32 bit only and fussy what it runs under, so I run 32 bit Windows 7 which has worked very happily for years.
Recently the system it was running on has had issues, they proved to be just the CMOS 2032 battery and are solved, but it got me thinking that I'm a bit vulnerable if things go wrong so I got to think of getting it running on a second system 'just in case'.
My workshop system is also 32 bit Windows 7 as I run some CNC programs that need it, and with a bit of messing about I could install a floppy drive and do a clean install. But just as an experiment I thought that I'd copy the directory structure and files directly onto the the workshop system via the network that they are both connected to.
To my amazement it all works splendidly. I can only assume that it doesn't store anything in the registry as copied nothing from it.
I have NO desire to 'upgrade' to a more recent and very expensive copy of Sage which is cloud based anyway and you don't ultimately own it but with the upcoming changes to self assessment tax (having to make four submissions a year) my accountant has decided to retire as she doesn't want the hassle and I'll probably do it myself. (Previously I just ran a Sage report off and sent it to her)
Now under DOS porting programs like this was easy and common, but when did Windows manage to stop it? I asume when the resgistry came in but what version of Windows was that?
For historical reasons I run a genuine licensed copy of Sage (Accounting Software) for my personal / self assessment tax that dates from the Dark Ages - suffice it to say my original distribution copy is on four floppy disks. It is 32 bit only and fussy what it runs under, so I run 32 bit Windows 7 which has worked very happily for years.
Recently the system it was running on has had issues, they proved to be just the CMOS 2032 battery and are solved, but it got me thinking that I'm a bit vulnerable if things go wrong so I got to think of getting it running on a second system 'just in case'.
My workshop system is also 32 bit Windows 7 as I run some CNC programs that need it, and with a bit of messing about I could install a floppy drive and do a clean install. But just as an experiment I thought that I'd copy the directory structure and files directly onto the the workshop system via the network that they are both connected to.
To my amazement it all works splendidly. I can only assume that it doesn't store anything in the registry as copied nothing from it.
I have NO desire to 'upgrade' to a more recent and very expensive copy of Sage which is cloud based anyway and you don't ultimately own it but with the upcoming changes to self assessment tax (having to make four submissions a year) my accountant has decided to retire as she doesn't want the hassle and I'll probably do it myself. (Previously I just ran a Sage report off and sent it to her)
Now under DOS porting programs like this was easy and common, but when did Windows manage to stop it? I asume when the resgistry came in but what version of Windows was that?
