First post, by Andrew T.
- Rank
- Newbie
When my last Windows 95 computer died, I reluctantly bit the bullet and started using Windows 7 exclusively. I expected to have issues running or emulating games on the newer OS...which I did. Surprisingly, though, my most intense and unexpected problems haven't been with games at all, but with accessories and productivity applications!
Take Windows' WordPad accessory, for example. I have a huge number of .DOC files created by WordPad in Win95. Microsoft Word can open them, but Word is overkill for viewing short notes that I never intended to print out...and I'd prefer to keep them in their original Word 6 format, in any case. Until this month, I assumed there had been essentially only two versions of WordPad in history: The "normal" menu-driven version from Windows 95 thru Vista which saved files in Word 6 .DOC format, and the ribbonified Windows 7 version which offered up DOCX and RTF only. Right? Well, not quite...
To handle the files, my first instinct was to copy the "normal" Vista version of WordPad to my computer. I then discovered that Vista WordPad was incapable of opening Word 6 files: The application itself looked no different than the version in 2000 and XP, but the functionality had been removed. WTF?
My next instinct was to copy over the Windows 2000 version. Yet while Win2000 WordPad seemed capable of generating DOC files on Windows 7 (whether they're actually in Word 6 format or not, I don't know), it was as equally incapable of reading the Win95-generated documents that I already had: Such files would simply open as plain text laced with formatting-code garbage. This was unexpected: I spent years using Windows 2000 as a secondary OS, and don't recall ever having problems opening Win95-generated WordPad DOC files when running Win2K WordPad in its native environment. This seems to suggest that WordPad is not a self-sufficient program, but relies on libraries elsewhere in Windows to perform its file conversions.
Third try was to run the original WordPad from Windows 95. This version was capable of opening my Win95-generated WordPad DOC files properly. Success? Nope: Clicking on "Open" or "Save" triggers an incompatibility on Windows 7 that immediately shuts down the program.
So, as usual...what to do? Is it possible to make Windows 2000 WordPad read the same files on Windows 7 that it's capable of reading on Windows 2000? Is it possible to make the Windows 95 version work? Or should I just drop the issue, and use another program?
