I had a need to print out a few calendar pages today, and after thinking about it for a second, I realized that there was a calendar program of some sort on a pile of ancient CDs in the closet that I had not yet dumped. I had actually thrown out a lot of CDs already because they failed to run under Win7, including a few things that I had sorely missed at upgrade time, like the software that came with two of my three scanners. (Thanks to God and all the fates that there is a VueScan X64 that understands both scanners.)
I dug in a box and there it was: Broderbund’s Calendar Creator 7, copyright 1999. It indicated that the software was for Win9x and NT4. I never remember installing it, and honestly don’t recall how it came to me. I have accepted dead or dying computers from other people who had no idea where to take them and didn’t want to just put them out on the curb. Some of these machines came with cardboard boxes full of odd and often broken stuff, with an alluvial layer of software CDs on the bottom. I’m guessing that this was one of them.
So hey, wotthehell: I popped it into my Core 2 Duo/Win7 lab machine, fully expecting it to fail to either install, run, or both. It installed. And it ran.
Once.
However, during its first run it actually created a calendar for me, and printed several pages as a test. I edited the page layout a litle bit and printed the three months that I needed. Then I closed the program and went on to other things. A couple of hours later I realized I needed one more month, but when I tried to run it again, it croaked.
I would have shrugged and tossed it, except that it did run once, launched by the installer as soon as the installer had finished with it. Hmmm. Since installers have to have admin permissions to do their jobs, this made a certain amount of sense, and suggested that if I could run the app as admin, it should work. I gave it admin permissions. It worked.
The 16-bit colors look a little weird, but it runs full-screen at 1600 X 1200 with only one glitch: Print preview doesn’t quite reflect reality. Screens that big didn’t exist in 1999, so I can forgive it that much. It did the job I needed, didn’t cost anything, and as best I can tell didn’t mess anything else up. (That’s not universal, and it’s why I always install things first on a lab machine or a VM. At least do a restore point before you install weird stuff like this.)
If you ever find yourself in this situation, here’s how you run old software as admin:
- Right-click the shortcut to get the context menu.
- Select Properties.
- On the Shortcut Properties dialog, select the Shortcut tab.
- Click the Advanced button.
- Check the “Run as administrator” checkbox.
- Click OK.
Keep in mind that not all ancient software will be this cooperative. A lot of old stuff won’t run at all, or even install. However, it’s useful to try running it as admin before you flip the CD into the trash.
I may still go looking for a modern calendar program. However, it was a good memory jogger, and made me acknowledge that whoever wrote that thing did a very good job of anticipating the future. This is not universal programmer behavior, trust me, and I am not exempt: A DOS program listing utility I wrote in Turbo Pascal in 1985 or so would run in a DOS box in NT4 and Win2K…but after 1999 passed into history, it labeled the printouts as occurring in the year 19100. So it goes.
