Alexander: Using old software on Windows 8.1

Q: For years, I used a mu­tu­al fund data­base program called Value Line Mu­tu­al Funds Survey for Windows. When I re­placed my Windows XP PC with a new one run­ning Windows 8.1, I down­load­ed an­oth­er copy of the Value Line program, but found it wouldn't work. Value Line told me that their soft­ware is an old­er 16-bit program, and that they have no plans to up­grade it to work on my new 64-bit PC. What's the prob­lem, and is there a way around it?

Peter Schoeffel, Jack­son­ville, Fla.

A: There are two so­lu­tions. But to choose be­tween them, you need to know why your new Windows op­er­at­ing sys­tem can't run your old Value Line program. Here's the gist:

Mi­cro­soft's op­er­at­ing sys­tems store or re­trieve in­for­ma­tion using a "data ad­dress" that is a cer­tain num­ber of "bits" long. (A bit is a bas­ic unit of in­for­ma­tion.) Windows o­rig­i­nal­ly used 16-bit-long ad­dress­es, but as PC stor­age de­mands grew it be­came clear that Windows would run out of ad­dress­es be­cause there weren't en­ough num­ber com­bi­na­tions avail­able. As a re­sult, Windows 95, and later Windows XP, were de­signed as 32-bit sys­tems, mean­ing they used 32-bit-long stor­age ad­dress­es that had many more pos­si­ble ­com­bi­na­tions.

Windows 8.1 comes in 32-bit or 64-bit ver­sions, the lat­ter pro­vid­ing even more ad­dress­es. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, you have the 64-bit ver­sion, which doesn't know what to do with your Value Line program that uses a 16-bit ad­dress sys­tem.

The two so­lu­tions prob­a­bly in­volve pay­ing a re­pair shop to do the work for you:

You could re­place your PC's 64-bit ver­sion of Windows 8.1 with a 32-bit ver­sion, which is back­ward-com­pat­i­ble en­ough to run your Value Line program. But there's a catch: Your 64-bit PC prob­a­bly has 4 to 8 giga­bytes of RAM (ran­dom ac­cess mem­o­ry). But the 32-bit ver­sion of Windows 8.1, which has fewer mem­o­ry ad­dress­es, can use only about 3.5 giga­bytes of RAM. The rest will re­main idle, which means new­er programs may run slow­er than be­fore.

Q: When­ev­er you give a Web ad­dress, you al­ways start with "tinyurl." What is this? Do I type in the word or is it a sym­bol for some­thing?

Hope Liz, St. Au­gus­tine, Fla.

A: The TinyURL is a short­cut for a real, of­ten long­er, Web ad­dress. And, like a Web ad­dress, it needs to be typed into your brows­er's ad­dress line ex­act­ly as it ap­pears, using let­ters, num­bers, pe­riods and slash­es. For ex­am­ple, typ­ing tinyurl.com/n5wh553 into your brows­er's Web ad­dress line will take you to last week's col­umn. Side note: be­cause TinyURL ad­dress­es are short­cuts, not real ad­dress­es, they can't be found using a Goo­gle search.