Leveraging Supported Software

Many applications depend on system components which are not present in an empty bottle but can be installed as needed. Often, installing one or more of these pieces will assist the installation or running of unsupported programs. Most of these packages are easily available via the CrossOver software installation process -- typically you will have to uncheck the 'hide service packs and dependencies' option to see these packages.

Core System Fonts

CrossOver automatically accesses whatever TrueType fonts are already present on your system. An additional set of 'core fonts' can be installed via the CrossOver Installer Assistant ('the Install Wizard,' on Linux.) The Core Fonts package includes familiar names such as Arial, Andale, and Courier.

Many modern software installers require the 'Tahoma' font which, alas, is not available as part of the Core Fonts package due to licensing restrictions. If you have a current Windows license then you may already have a license for this font, in which case you can copy it from the C:\Windows\Fonts directory on your Windows system into that directory within a bottle to make it available to programs and installers running on CrossOver.

CrossOver HTML

The CrossOver and Wine developers are gradually working on a component based on the Mozilla browser which can replace functions that Internet Explorer provides on Windows. It's fairly well-developed at this point, and is getting better with each release. If you are running an application which requires Internet or HTML-rendering capabilities, this is a good component to install. In many cases (e.g. Quicken 2007) it will integrate better with your applications than Internet Explorer. This is especially true in win2000 or winxp bottles, where Internet Explorer works poorly or not at all.

Internet Explorer 6

If you've already struck out with CrossOver HTML or are installing your app in a win98 bottle (and you have a valid Windows license), go ahead and install Internet Explorer 6.0 into the bottle with your apps. For some purposes IE6 will work better with your app than CrossOver HTML.

Take note that even if your application doesn't appear to have anything to do with web browsing, the installation of IE or CrossOver HTML may help. That's because both installers include a host of native dlls which your application may expect to find. A good example is wininet.dll as many applications call on this DLL if a network connection is necessary.

Microsoft System Installer

You can download the Microsoft Installer for Windows 9x from Microsoft. This will help with installing binaries in the '.msi' file format.

Microsoft Data Access Components

The MDAC redistributables may help get applications that use databases to work properly.

Windows Scripting Host

If your application uses Windows Scripting, download and install the SCR redistributable.

For more info on Windows Scripting see the ICPUG site.

Distributed COM support

DCOM can be installed automatically using the CrossOver Setup tool. It is also available from Microsoft. DCOM provides Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) services and communication between programs using Component Object Model (COM). If you receive an error that a newer version is installed you will need to tell CrossOver that ole32 is a native DLL in order to install DCOM. To do this from the command line run

$ ~/cxoffice/bin/wine -dll ole32=n dcom95.exe