Windows Compatibility

Does anyone know how the windows compatibility stuff works ? What does Windows change when these are set ?

Windows compatibility in relation to what? Old windows software, aftermarket software, hardware?

Sorry dude, i should have been clearer, i mean how does the Windows compatibility work i.e. what happens underneath when you click the "compatibility" tag in Windows XP and set it to say "run this program in compatibility mode for Windows (2000, 95, etc) ?

It works by an awfull lot of people trying something from within windows. Then they see what happens. If all is well MS give the seal of approval and it get's added to the approved list or signed by MS list.

Generally it means that it is trying to run with DOS compatibility, that would work uinder the older operating systems.

Now, the interesting bit :) Some older games would interrogate the system to see if there was the requisite hardware......a typical DOS trick, but it does not have to be DOS. XP will not allow this interrogation, so the game will not work

So your compatibility setting allows older programs to interact with your hardware.....

Something like that anyways :)

Actually, when you select 'run compatible with' win95 or 98 it halts certain features in XP that MS thinks could potentially crash the game. It also starts up a program called wowexec, which is quite prone to crash your computer (at least it does mine, quite often). Learn more about wowexec at http://www.2-spyware.com/file-wowexec-exe.html

I have no idea how windows compability is working(i supose some things as nihil) but so long my old games are running doesn't matter :)!

Because yesterday i got an antionline point for adding nothing to the thread, today i started google and was looking for system compatibility. I found several web sites which were traying to explain how it woks. You will not have a big idea for system compatibility after reading all of them, but perhaps after reading that one you will begin to understanding it.
:D