I am upgrading an offices network (2 PCs w/ Vista Business, 1 router, Modem) . Originally the 2 Win 98 Systems were connected directly to each other and shared the offices custom Medical software(16bit DOS app) from a shared hard drive on 1 PC. The application is standalone, no install program just a folder with the data and exe/batch files. The problem i'm having is the antiquated medical software they use will not share correctly over the new network. It is shared on the new PC 1 and can open on new PC 2 from the shared drive but when attempting to access information on PC 2 error message states certain files are missing (I'm assuming because its' not running directly off local machine PC1 and cannot find apps database). I've also tried to setup the application folder on each system and having it auto synchronizing the folders but 1 PCs app always ends up corrupted. How can I set it up so that this one DOS application can be used from both systems ? I need to keep it as simple as possible on the user's end being that they are not technically savvy whatsoever. So i can't really have them trying to open up remote connections or virtual machines.

Kind of hard to tell. We'd need to know the exact software name and version probably. That may not be enough. The exact file complaint might help us too. DOS programs could be simple to install or require some very odd things. One being special files and even locking on to various dos versions or command.com to operate. Setver command might work. Also some files were left out of Vista for security I think. Might have to create an autoexec and config file. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

The software is a custom software made for the medical office. It does not have an installer. It just has the 266 files mostly database files and a few exe files in a folder. I can copy the folder from one computer to another and it works perfectly fine. When you share the folder from a hard drive on one system the application does come up as normal but then when you search it fails to find one of the database files. The weird thing is is that it worked before when the computers were connected directly to each other and on windows 98 environment. I've tried to replicate as many settings from the original systems as i could, I've tried running separate identical folders on both computers and an application to synchronize both folders to update any changes made from either system but one systems folder always becomes corrupted. Thank you in advance for all your help.