Re: Getting Xy4Dos Up & Running on T61 with XP-Pro

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

I'd just copy over EDITOR.EXE from your disk. See if that does it.
> Sorry to report that following Patricia's crystal clear instructions gave
> me yet another lovely desktop shortcut to a 1-second XyWrite session. It
> opened editor, and a second later it crashed just as before and as it did
> after each of the other proposed solutions. If neither Carl, nor Robert
> nor Harry nor Patricia has the solution, it seems doubtful that a solution
> is possible. And yet it must be.  Any other ideas?  Fresh copy of the
> whole program from XyWrite.com? I have my 4.017 disks, although the
> laptop, of course, has no diskdrive. I could copy the TTG disks into my
> office network and then back onto the laptop ...
> --Peter G
>
> Patricia M. Godfrey wrote:
> > Robert Holmgren wrote:
> > > Sometimes STARTUP.INT just crashes Editor, for no obvious reason
> > > at all. It happens especially on my computers when I haven't
> > > rebooted the whole machine for a long time. Memory gets goofed
> > > up or something.
> > Very interesting. I had the same thing that Peter is reporting (Xy
> > flashes on screen, then vanishes) once, when I was porting it from a 98
> > to a W2K or XP machine (cannot recall which now). Of course, I was trying
> > to use the load-by-means-of-a-batchfile method that I had used all
> > through DOS and W9x, and I assumed it was something in the way XP handles
> > batchfiles. Startup.int, IIRC, had nothing to do with it.
> > What might have something to do with it, though, is Read-only or Archive
> > bits set on the files or folders involved, esp. if you copied from the 98
> > machine to a CD and then to the XP one. Open a DOS prompt and command
> > ATTRIB -R -A c:\xy4\*.* /s
> > That should clear any such settings, if they're the spanner in the works.
> > Anyway, after Robert persuaded me to stop trying to launch with a
> > batchfile, I took to always running Xy from a cmd.exe, not a command.com,
> > VDM. This was chiefly to get the icons I want to display always and
> > everywhere, but I have generally found it quite as stable and usable as a
> > commend.com VDM.
> > So give that a try: right click on your desktop, choose New, then
> > Shortcut. (I'm working on W2K here, so some things may be slightly
> > different on XP.) Carefully type in in the window that opens:
> > %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe
> > Click on Next until the shortcut is finished, then right-click on it,
> > choose Properties. In the Target window, carefully append to
> > %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe
> > a space, followed by /c c:\xy4\editor.exe
> > Assuming c:\xy4 is editor.exe's directory. Put that directory in the slot
> > that says "Start in", and put "Normal Window" in the one that says "Run in".
> > While you're at it, on the Shortcut tab, click Change icon and put
> > something other than the c:\ prompt there, so you know when you're
> > calling Xy. (There are probably some icons in your Xy directory if you
> > copied it over; browse there.)
> > If double-clicking on that shortcut works, you're in business. Now right
> > click on the blue bar at the top of Xy's working screen, Choose
> > Properties, then Fonts, and choose a font (your initial one may be very
> > small; enlarging the font automatically enlarges the size of the window).
> > I forget whether setting memory values really takes in XP; I know it is
> > absolutely a Potemkin Village in Vista. But I have fewer memory problems
> > in both that I did in 9x.
> > I'm tempted to wonder, for the 999th time, how people manage with their
> > data folders on C: along with the opsys and programs. Having a separate
> > data partition is _so_ much more convenient.


Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx