I bought a Dell XPS-8900 February 2016 with Windows 10. I had been using Windows XP for years, with Corel WordPerfect 12. The discussions I saw suggested the WP wouldn't work on Windows 10, so I didn't bother. But a few weeks ago I decided to try the first disc of the WP 12 2-CD set that I had. Amazingly -- because I didn't even have to use compatibility mode -- the WordPerfect 12 loaded fine, and everything on it works as usual. - Eddie
Came across this thread after experiencing the same problem as BrianM after upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Interestingly, I'd had Wordperfect 12 happily installed on three different laptops, all three different editions of Win7, and all three different manufacturers. I upgraded to Windows 10 at different points throughout Microsoft's free upgrade period. WP12 continued to work perfectly on the first two upgrades (HP laptop/Win7 Home Edition upgraded in December 2015, and Toshiba laptop/Win7 Ultimate Edition, upgraded in May 2016). However, the third laptop (MSI/Win7 Pro Edition, upgraded in July 2016) is the newest of the three and is my main computer (significantly more software and more data), but post-upgrade testing of WP12 gave the very same result as BrianM's. I might have given up on WP12 if this had been my first post-upgrade experience, but as the other two computers did not have problems with WP12 after upgrading, I was determined not to be beaten. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling (several times) from the original WP12 disks, both with and without a Clean Boot, and with and without XP SP3 compatibility mode, and with or without a custom installation. No luck until I trawled the internet for clues. This is how I finally got it working.
Follow the instructions from this Corel site to download and install a registry merge file:
https://support.corel.com/hc/en-us/articles/216416497-How-to-perform-an-installation-in-Safe-Mode
Then install WP12 in Safe Mode (the above instructions explain how to enter Safe Mode in Win10, but I had to find extra instructions on the web to get into "Safe Mode with Networking" while using WiFi instead of Ethernet!)
Before you do anything else, download the three Service Packs for WP12 from the Corel FTP webpage here:
ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpwin/12/en/
(IE. download the 3 files ending in .msp) and install them in numerical order. N.B. You will need your original WordPerfect Disk 1 to install SP1.
Once I had installed all three Service Packs, I used msconfig to return to a Normal Startup on Restart.
WordPerfect 12 worked perfectly for me after that.
