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I am trying to instal Delphi4 in windows 7. I am new to using delphi. When I tried to insatl it, following error was thrown. "config.nt. the system file is not suitable for running ms-dos and microsoft windows applications"

I looked up it in google and tried following steps.

  1. I tried to check weather all the 3 files config.nt, autoexec.nt, command.com in the system32 folder. They were all present.

  2. Than I tried to write all the files getting content for each files from google and saved them.Then I replaced the files in system 32 with new files(config.nt, autoexec.nt, command.com ). Even after that I was not able to instal Delphi 4. same error message kept coming up.

  3. Than I tried the following steps. a.Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. b.Double-click System, click the Advanced tab, and then click Environment Variables. c.In the User variables for User_Name list, click TMP, and then click Edit. d.In the Variable value box, type c:\windows\temp, and then click OK three times. Alternatively, type the path of any folder that does not use long file names in the Variable Value box. e.Close Control Panel. But this also didnt help. I am totally stumped on what I should try next. It would be great if any body can help.

RRUZ
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Saurabh Agrawal
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    It would probably be more trouble than its worth trying to get it to run under Windows 7. Why not source Windows 98 somewhere, install it in a VM like Virtualbox, and go from there? It is 14 year old software... – Matt Sieker Jun 12 '12 at 05:14
  • Your question is a little unclear. How are you starting the installer? At what point do you get the error that was "thrown"? (I'm guessing that you mean you got an error dialog.) `Command.com` has no business being on Windows 7, and no Delphi install since Delphi 1 has required it, and `config.nt`, `autoexec.nt`, and `command.com` were for running old DOS installers, which Win7 has zero support for running. Please edit your question to also provide the **exact** steps you followed to install Delphi, just like you did your attempts at troubleshooting. Thanks. :-) – Ken White Jun 12 '12 at 15:54
  • I think you could run the installer in virtualbox then backup your registry settings, and just copy the files over to Windows 7. I just tried to install Delphi 4 yesterday, and it failed in a similar way. However Delphi 7 is nearly 100% source code compatible and installs out of the box. So upgrade to Delphi 7 at least. – Warren P Jun 13 '12 at 02:05

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What worked for me on Windows Vista (have not tried it on Windows 7) was to create a shortcut to the SETUP.EXE for Delphi 4 and to configure the shortcut to use the compatibility mode for "Windows NT 4". To do so open the properties of the shortcut, select the tab "Compatibility", check "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and select the desired OS.

Launching the installation program using this shortcut allowed me to install Delphi 4.

Or, as others have suggested, use the free Windows XP mode VM in Windows 7 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/).

Olaf Hess
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  • I actually installed into XP, and then copied the resulting folders over to Windows 7 64 bit manually, and then went to some trouble to move the registry settings over and to register OLE/COM DLLs with regsvr32.exe and the result is that I had Delphi 4 ALMOST working on 64 bit windows 7. So I can get everything working in 64 bit windows 7 too, except that the whole IDE crashes a bit. So it looks like 32 bit Windows 7 is the End of the Line for Ancient Delphi 4 codebases. – Warren P Oct 25 '12 at 01:12