Moving program from windows 3.1 to xp - serial port driver problems

[Drew 27]

I'm running a program written in visual basic 3 on a Windows 3.1 box, and when I tried to move the program onto XP (by directly copying the .exe and some necessary VB library files), the program ran but was unable to communicate through the serial port (it gave me a 'device not found' error)

I suspect this is a result of changes to the serial port's driver, and was wondering whether there is some sort of alternate driver or emulator, or another solution, that would enable me to run a program that is designed for windows 3.1.

[Justin_E]

Hey Drew,

Do you happen to know what driver you're using to communicate with the serial port in that program? Is it the NI-VISA driver? You may want to try downloading a version of NI-VISA that supports Windows XP. Versions 2.6.1 and on support XP, and can be found here : http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/fn/p/sn/n19:Windows,n23:1640/lang/en
You might have to re-write some of the code for the newer driver though.

As far as emulators go, you could use a piece of software like VMWare to run Windows 3.1 with XP.

[Drew 27]

thanks!

this was very helpful.