Re: startup problem with 4.017

[TBaehr@xxxxxxxx]

Here are a couple of things to try:

Make sure your STARTUP.INT file refers to the SETTINGS.DFL file correctly.
 For instance, do you need to put a drive letter in the Load command? If
you're running XyWrite off a secondary hard drive, the command as you gave it
in your message may not be able to find SETTINGS.DFL.

Have you created a shortcut to XyWrite? Review the shortcut to be sure that
no characters appear after the EDITOR command. There are command line
options for running alternate STARTUP files, and if you have some characters
after EDITOR.EXE or EDITOR on the command line, you may not be executing
STARTUP.INT. Do the same kind of analysis if you're running XyWrite from a
batch file.

To verify that STARTUP.INT runs at all, click on the Start menu, click on
Run, and enter c:\xy4\editor. Press Enter. The is the most "plain vanilla"
way to run XyWrite. If STARTUP.INT doesn't seem to run then, the problem may
be within STARTUP.INT itself.

Examine STARTUP.INT itself, in expanded view. Are there any stray ≪EX≫
commands, especially near the top? They would cause an untimely exit from
STARTUP.INT.

Put "BC Got to here;*;" at the beginning of the STARTUP.INT,
where BC is the function call and  is an actual carriage
return, and without the quotation marks. To get BC into the file, press F5,
type pfunc bc, and press Enter.

Now restart XyWrite. If "Got to here" appears on the command line,
STARTUP.INT is at least beginning. Move the "Got to here" line down in
STARTUP.INT, one or two lines and a time, restarting XyWrite in between. If
there's a problem, you will eventually fail to get "Got to here" on the
command line, and the line or lines above it are the culprits.

You may also have a problem in SETTINGS.DFL, which may provide settings up to
a certain point and then give up. You could do a line-by-line analysis of
SETTINGS.DFL; this will be even more tedious than analyzing STARTUP.INT. One
diagnostic line you could put in is "default mg=XXX". When that is executed,
you'll get a persistent "XXX" on the prompt line. Again, move that line down
through the SETTINGS.DFL file and keep restarting XyWrite until the "XXX"
disappears.

A simpler way to verify that SETTINGS.DFL is running at all is to make a copy
of it and then modify SETTINGS.DFL so that it contains just one setting that
you can verify (like the mg setting). That will at least tell you that
XyWrite is getting to SETTINGS.DFL.

Good luck. A systematic approach to your problem will no doubt yield a
solution.

Tim Baehr