PB3.5 Use under WIN-XP help?

[Mike Luther]

Yes, I think this has been discussed before in the Forums. But searching
for it however I word it doesn't hit on it. Please again?

I've a couple users who want to run some of my PB 3.5 apps under WIN-XP
in a command line session. One has had no trouble running the suite
under WIN-NT 2000 Pro. They wish to update to XP/ Another has delivered
a WIN-98 box and his WIN-ME update disk to try to move from 98 to ME, and
thence via his WIN-XP Pro update disk to XP. Absolute disaster going
from ME to XP in relation to pest infections that invaded the process
during just the connection time to the Microsoft site for all the updates
needed on the converted system. Fresh install of XP on DFSEE low level
format of his IDE hard drive followed.

Same story from a fresh install trying to even do the critical updates
and XP updates. The box was trashed before I could even complete the
cycle on a dial-up connection, gloom. Second complete wipe disk and
XP install followed for him.

This time I'd been furnished a new M/S CD-ROM pack, now available from
M/S for free which has, at least in this case, all the critical updates
and patches through February 2004 on a CD-ROM, as well as a sample of
CA's new virus operations for M/S good for a year's free use. By use
of this approach I have been able to at least get a WIN-XP box up and
patched through all the needed criticals and XP changes as of this time
for testing. Yet in just three days of test use, the CA firewall test
that is included as a sample has trounced 78 more attempts to trash the
sample box ... wow!

I can see why M/S is making this master CD-ROM upgrade disk free now
that I've had this experience of not even being able to install the
product without losing the whole system before you can do the needed
patches across the IP game. But I've a stable system to test with now.

OK .. WIN-XP has a COMMAND LINE session window that is vaguely like the
old MS-DOS window in earlier times.

But it doesn't have EMS memory, nor the other memory size and setup
tools that were part of the old MS-DOS setup panes, nor the ability to
set the environment size for the session, for example.

I recall there was help here in hand coding the WIN-XP experience to
do this via some sort of CONFIG.SYS hand changes, or AUTOEXEC.BAT or
other similar work. Will someone please re-post the comparison and
help needs for this again here for me?

Thanks!




------------------
Mike Luther
[email protected]

[Lance Edmonds]

Provided the hardware supports it (and not all modern PC's can support EMS these days due to an absence of free addresses for the page frame), EMS should be able to be enabled through the Properties dialog for the app (or the shortcut to the app).

For example, using Windows Explorer, right-click on the EXE, select Properties. Adjust the memory settings as required, then click OK.

Viola!

Finally, by default, MSDOS sessions in NT/2000/XP use the CONFIG.NT and AUTOEXEC.NT file pair, which are generally located in the \WINDOWS tree. Shortcuts can be configured to use alternative .NT files.



------------------
Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Mike Luther]

Thanks Lance ..

OK .. got that figured out both from what you posted as well as what I
realized was my first error. I was looking on WIN-NT in the forum and
that long discussion in this is under the topic 'Window NT'. That is
why there was no hits.

If I can impose on you for a bit more help here? I've gotten us down
to the issue if calling a DOS-VDM session by forcing the session into
a DOS program or .. bluntly, going in and substituting the COMMAND.COM
format for the 'command' file. That does indeed produce the old setup
pane for how much EMS and so on. I even, glory be, got to see for one
brief instant, the old familiar MS-DOS icon flicker there on the screen,
but I've not seen that since! Wow...

OK now it shows that I have, say 10MB EMS and 9MB or whatever XMS that
is there, but there is "0" EMS available. That's the subject of this
whole other thread in the forum which seems to vary wildly in what
different users see. In one message, there was a gent who used the old
Manifest MFT.EXE program from QEMM to analyze things. I've just done
that on this box. Yep! Looks like the problem may be where to tell
the system to start the page frame.

Here's where I'm not aware of how to do this. It looks like what they
want you to do is to go into the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory. Then
you edit CONFIG.NT with a text editor to open, as needed. the EMM
parameter. From there you get to select three parameters which WIN-XP
will recognize. AltRegSet, BaseSegment and RAM.

By enabling EMS RAM, I can get the reported available EMS. But I do
not at this point know how to specify what BASE address is needed that
can be edited into CONFIG.NT at this point. Manifest tells me of this
particular box that there is 32MB of space between B000 and B7FF in
the way I'm used to looking at this. That's the only 'free' space at
all in this system what with all the all of the area from C800-EFFF
taken by "High RAM" as QEMM sees this thing.

Normally, deblocked into chunks by QEMM and shown as such by Manifest,
one can go in and put the Page Frame where space is available. As I
know this puppy, the 64K 'required' for the Page Frame needs to start
at some specific space, which you can assign to other than the usual
value with QEMM. If, though you have only 32K for Page Frame you still
can get some use out of things.

Two issues are puzzling here. I think, by what I read of the REM text
in the WIN-XP CONFIG.NT file, adding the switch to EMM of "RAM" is
supposed to deblock only 64K for 'something', but doing that makes no
difference in what I see of available memory from a MEM statement I
use on opening a DOS session if I add that. Then next, what is my
needed translation for the B=0X4000 or whatever format which is to
be used to hand set the start of the page frame in WIN-XT? It is also
stated in the REM Text that it rounds DOWN. What is the way I should,
for example, call out that 'free' B000-B7FF that Manifest shows that I
might be able to use as a 32K partial Page Frame?

Or .. why isn't the "RAM" command item working to allow me to free up
something from C000-EFFF to use here?

I'm not at all skilled in this area. From your very helpful advice
a long time ago on EMS and the time you have taken with me, perhaps you
can guide me here. Or if not, someone else can pick this up and see if
there is any way I can get something other than "0" available EMS?

Thanks if you can help.



------------------
Mike Luther
[email protected]

[Tom Hanlin]

No need to set the page frame location. That's automatic.

Perhaps you could run MEM /C from the command line and show us the results?

------------------
Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff