Re: DOS app annoyance

"Carmine Castiglia" <ccastiglia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:MImjh.37770$wP1.14718@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Kerry Brown" <kerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*a*m> wrote in message news:OlOuhvvJHHA.1424@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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




I will probably give the Virtual PC route a try. No problem finding the DOS disks; I have a copy of 6.0 on the shelf directly behind me right now and I'm pretty certain I saw 6.22 (?) in a storeroom at the office recently. Heck, I have a copies of DOS 5.0, Windows/386, Windows 1.0, and Windows 3.1 too!

FWIW, the thing that really gets to me is that I can't find anything significantly different between the PC's which "work" and those that don't. The home PC I am on right now (one of the ones that runs the app) has a 200 GB single-partition drive formatted NTFS; the office PCs that won't run the app have 80 GB single-partition NTFS drives. As mentioned before, all of the critical files seem to be the same version and byte-count; the creation dates differ I think only because of the retail XP install CD's vs. the Dell install CD's. I have checked things like anti-virus, firewall, etc.

The app (I still have the installation and user manuals) does not require any special install other than a "FILES=20" (or more) statement in Config.SYS/Config.NT and that's covered. On the home PC's, I can simply copy the entire installation folder to a new folder, change to that folder, double-click RBase.exe and it runs fine. If I take that exact same folder, copy it to one of the office PC's and try to run it, it bombs as previously described.

And, I didn't mention this earlier but the dbm includes a couple of database utilities which are run as separate DOS apps. These apps run fine on all of the PCs, both home and office. It is only the main executable, RBase.exe, which fails on the office PCs.



Trying to figure out an old DOS app doesn't work is an exercise in frustration. Since I started using virtual machines those frustrations have gone away. I actually like the beta of VPC 2007 much better than VPC 2004 but as you're using the DOS app for a business I wouldn't recommend using a beta product.

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


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