Windows – does old 16-bit Windows programs consume 100% of CPU in a x86 computer

16-bitwindows xpx86

Some days ago, I felt a bit nostalgic and grabbed the good old Microsoft Entertainment Pack from some site. The package has some cool games that were designed for Windows 3.1 and they are 16-bit programs. They didn't run on my new laptop with a 64-bit OS, (well, obviously). So I ran them on my old machine that has a 32-bit Windows XP.

Now I can play with these games. But the problem is, my machine overheats while running them. I closed all other programs and monitored the resources and realized that apparently, these games consume 100 percent of the CPU whenever I run them.

Since the games are simple with primitive graphics and don't seem to be that resource-hungry, I think the problem arises from the fact that they are 16-bit programs running on a 32-bit system. So, why does this happen?

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