running a windows app on mac

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zeeplezeeple
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hi folks, I have a bunch of little .exe's that were written for windows. The authors are scattered to the wind, of course, and one is retired due to advanced carpel tunnel, so there is no hope of them being poted to osx. Any suggestions on how to get these utilities to run on my Mac? I have looked at Darwine, but it looks like it doesn't support running misc. .exe's yet. Thanks! z.

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  • Reply 1 of 4
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,185member
    No.



    .exe files are designed to run within the Windows OS.... They NEED the Windows OS to function.

    Now, you could run them under Virtual PC, but for the price, you could just buy a cheap Windows OS computer that will actually work at a useable speed.
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  • Reply 2 of 4
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Zeeple

    Hi folks, I have a bunch of little .exe's that were written for windows. The authors are scattered to the wind, of course, and one is retired due to advanced carpel tunnel, so there is no hope of them being poted to osx. Any suggestions on how to get these utilities to run on my Mac? I have looked at Darwine, but it looks like it doesn't support running misc. .exe's yet. Thanks! z.



    Just get Virtual PC and those little apps will work just fine.



    Caveat: If your programs are standalone applications, no worries. However, your departed programmers may have used a development system that requires that you install certain runtime libraries to run those applications. Just make sure that your install everything.
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  • Reply 3 of 4
    zeeplezeeple Posts: 31member
    Thanks for the advice. I think that Virtual PC is a bit expensive. The cheapest I could find it for was about $114 dollars and then I'd have to dig out my old Win98 CD's if I could find them.



    The cheapest I saw for OSX that included a M$ OS was $224, and either of these prices is way more than I am willing to spend. I read that the Darwine project is aiming to include a runtime env that would accomodate .exe files but they are not there yet. I think I'll hold out until that is ready.



    Any other suggestions? Thanks!!
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  • Reply 4 of 4
    keotkeot Posts: 116member
    Download QemuX and install Windows 98 on it. It's really slow but free, open source and allowed me to run a program I needed for my course.



    Don't install Windows XP on it unless you have a dual core dual processor G5 and a long weekend.



    QemuX has nothing like the drag and drop functionality of Virtual PC, but it has a good startup wizard.



    If you need any more help (such as moving files onto QemuX) post back and I'll try and help.
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