Re: DOS app annoyance

Try loading DOS into a virtual machine and run the program there.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

Virtual PC is free. The hard part will be finding your old DOS disks to install it.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
www.vistahelp.ca/phpBB2


"Carmine Castiglia" <ccastiglia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:7fkjh.24897$Gr2.8168@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This is one of those thinks that just annoys the heck out of me...

I have an old DOS database app, RBase, which I haul out once a year when we do inventory of a medium-sized manufacturing facility. Sure, it's old, but I have extensive database scripts written for it and it gets the job done nicely. For its once a year usage, I have seen little reason to dump it.

Here's the problem: The app runs perfectly in a DOS window on my home PC's - both desktops and notebook - but will not run on two of the office PC's which I have tried it on. All of the PC's are similarly configured with XP Pro/SP2 (and all available updates), all have fast P4 processors (>2 GHz) and large NTFS drives, the desktops have 1GB ram, 512MB in the notebook. All have identical %systemroot%\System32\Autoexec.NT and Config.SYS files. The NTVDM related files (ntvdm.exe, ntio.sys, ntdos.sys) which I have reviewed appear to be identical as well. The app's properties (Memory, Screen, Compatibility, etc) are configured identically on each of the systems.

On the office PC's, trying to run the main executable (RBase.exe) within a "Command" window crashes with results similar to those described in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/245184/en-us. On the other hand, if I simply double-click the executable (or run it in a "Cmd" window) a DOS window opens but the app never starts. The window remains black with a white cursor which just sort of zips around within in somewhat diagonal patterns (if the app were to start up, the window would have gone to a white-on-blue text window drawn with the ASCII box drawing characters). I eventually have to force the window closed by killing the app.

Both of the office PC's have no trouble running DOS apps in general; I can open command windows and execute common commands without incident. I have reviewed http://support.microsoft.com/kb/156687/en-us and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314106 but gotten nowhere.

FWIW, the office PC's are Dells which came preloaded with XP. The home PC's are running retail copies of XP.

Any thoughts as to how to get this fixed would be greatly appreciated.


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