   Compatiblity Mode in XP
  I''ve used it a couple of times and it doesn''t seems to work.Is there a certain way you have to apply to an application?I usually right click, set the compatibility to Win 98 or 95, hit Apply, and then OK. Yet, I still get nothing.....why? why?? 
  It worked a few time for me  ( I remember 2 times where it worked )But this isn''t a magic option.. We can''t expect it to fix everything ;  It simply exchanges some core functions for older versions, I think. Its main purpose is to relieve apps which used either known bugs or undocumented functions to their advantage. ;  Much of what it does is tell the program, "I''m not really Windows XP." Some old games used to check what version of Windows you are using but they don''t know about Windows XP since they are old. ;  What bothers me even more is why some programs don''t work on Windows XP. All programs I have wrote work on Windows XP, no exception. ;  It worked for me once. ;  yeah it worked for me like 2 out of 10 times so it seems to have a pretty bad average?It''s kinda last resort thing like manually editing the registry for me although if you read some of the readme''s that come with updates for winxp it''s supposed to be improving?    If God played dice, He''d win.—Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos ;  As stated the majority of "compatiblity mode" is giving false information and interfaces to the application to make it think it is running on an older version of Windows. Badly written apps where sometimes hardcoded to expect a certain value, without any regard for future versions of Windows/DirectX/etc. The best example would be the problem faced by the Windows 3.11 group. A huge number of applications written for Windows 3.1 where simply hardcoded to call the version number API function and check to see if == 3.1. In the end they had to made a totally new version function, while having the old one always return 3.1. ;  If you''re going to write it hard coded like that, shouldn''t you at least let the user over-ride it? ;  Because XP reports itself as NT5.1 quite a few old game installers pop up the error "This game will not run on Windows NT, only 95 or 98" and so the compatibility mode helps there.A few programs seem to work a little more reliably under 95 emulation for me too. 