that's not true, virtual 8086 mode is gone but you can still execute 16-bit programs fine Windows 10 running in 32-bit on 64-bit processors manages this withou

that's not true, virtual 8086 mode is gone but you can still execute 16-bit programs fine Windows 10 running in 32-bit on 64-bit processors manages this without issue, so it can't be the hardware the real reason is they couldn't be bothered to work around some of the technical issues: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384249.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384249.aspx