Run a program in a sizeable window?

Hi,

I have some old XP graphics software that I need to run every few days. The problem is that it automatically goes full screen at start up and here is no way to reduce it.

When the software was written 4:3 monitors were all there was, so going full screen was fine. But, now with a 16:9 monitor it stretches everything and makes stuff very difficult to make sense of.

I am looking for something that will run the XP stuff in it's own work space so I can adjust the size of that window and in return, adjust the graphics size and shape back to 4:3.

I tried using Virtual-PCs like VMWare Player and VirtualBox but they both seem overkill and made the software run very slow as I had to use my old copy of win98 as the Guest OS. I can't afford to buy a copy of XP or win7 to use as a Guest.

Any thoughts?

Did you set the program to run in XP compatible mode ? example as shown in the screen shot

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/6832-compatibility-mode-use-windows-8-a.html

Yup, thanks I had tried XP-Mode, but Scaling is not what I need. All that does is use the basic windows font sizes IF I have changed them for the underlying Host system. I have not! Also, 640 x 480 is not what I need either. It just expanded the window to fit the monitor - again but with terrible resolution.

Have you tried running a Linux guest (Linux is free) in Virtualbox? You might get it to work under Linux using Wine/Playonlinux. A lot of Windows software can actually run under Linux using Wine and/ or a graphical frontend for it like Playonlinux.