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| JerryMouse 2004-03-30, 6:30 pm |
| Facts in the case:
Old DOS Realia COBOL program, only when running under XP, attempts to access
floppy drive for no apparent reason. Same program does not give a fig about
the floppy drive under Win9x, Win2k, or WinNT.
Oh well, just an oddity. The old DOS program is "mature" and is being phased
out. Fuggedaboutit.
Wouldn't you know: One customer gets new Compaq computer, XP installed, and
the computer doesn't even HAVE a floppy drive.
You guessed it, program barely runs - fifteen seconds between keystrokes,
three minutes to load, all on a lickety-split computer.
Another of the customer's machines (Win98) networked to the new Compaq still
runs swell (the database resides on the new, XP, machine).
Does anybody know:
a) What's going on?
b) A circumvention?
We're going to try adding an antiquated floppy drive to this
up-to-the-minute computer if we don't get a clue pronto.
Thanks for thinking about this.
Jerry
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| Donald Tees 2004-03-30, 10:30 pm |
| JerryMouse wrote:
> Facts in the case:
>
> Old DOS Realia COBOL program, only when running under XP, attempts to access
> floppy drive for no apparent reason. Same program does not give a fig about
> the floppy drive under Win9x, Win2k, or WinNT.
>
> Oh well, just an oddity. The old DOS program is "mature" and is being phased
> out. Fuggedaboutit.
>
> Wouldn't you know: One customer gets new Compaq computer, XP installed, and
> the computer doesn't even HAVE a floppy drive.
>
> You guessed it, program barely runs - fifteen seconds between keystrokes,
> three minutes to load, all on a lickety-split computer.
>
> Another of the customer's machines (Win98) networked to the new Compaq still
> runs swell (the database resides on the new, XP, machine).
>
> Does anybody know:
>
> a) What's going on?
> b) A circumvention?
>
> We're going to try adding an antiquated floppy drive to this
> up-to-the-minute computer if we don't get a clue pronto.
>
> Thanks for thinking about this.
>
> Jerry
>
>
Its probably waiting for floppy disk timeouts 99.9% of the time.
Put a drive A: into your config.sys ... a small ram disk. Betcha it
goes like a bat out of hell. Make it a 360K ram disk, and might even
find out what it's doing.
Donald
| |
| JerryMouse 2004-03-30, 10:30 pm |
| Donald Tees wrote:
> JerryMouse wrote:
> Its probably waiting for floppy disk timeouts 99.9% of the time.
> Put a drive A: into your config.sys ... a small ram disk. Betcha it
> goes like a bat out of hell. Make it a 360K ram disk, and might even
> find out what it's doing.
Keep thinking.
On my machine I have a diskette in the drive. Pgm never writes anything. Why
the program would want a floppy drive disk access between letters in a word
is a marvel.
I can unplug my floppy drive and re-create the customer's symptoms (W-A-Y
slow...).
XP doesn't have a config.sys file. XP does, however, allow one to move drive
letters around, sometimes at random.
Turns out, customer DOES have a floppy drive. More investigation is needed.
Although this might be enough to move her to our Windows version.....
| |
| E P Chandler 2004-03-31, 12:30 am |
| "JerryMouse" <nospam@bisusa.com> wrote in message news:<mIqdnU-1lccUa_TdRVn-gQ@giganews.com>...
> Facts in the case:
>
> Old DOS Realia COBOL program, only when running under XP, attempts to access
> floppy drive for no apparent reason. Same program does not give a fig about
> the floppy drive under Win9x, Win2k, or WinNT.
>
> Oh well, just an oddity. The old DOS program is "mature" and is being phased
> out. Fuggedaboutit.
>
> Wouldn't you know: One customer gets new Compaq computer, XP installed, and
> the computer doesn't even HAVE a floppy drive.
>
> You guessed it, program barely runs - fifteen seconds between keystrokes,
> three minutes to load, all on a lickety-split computer.
>
> Another of the customer's machines (Win98) networked to the new Compaq still
> runs swell (the database resides on the new, XP, machine).
>
> Does anybody know:
>
> a) What's going on?
> b) A circumvention?
>
> We're going to try adding an antiquated floppy drive to this
> up-to-the-minute computer if we don't get a clue pronto.
>
> Thanks for thinking about this.
>
> Jerry
A Google search on XP & "Phantom drive access" turned up a short
article on this and a link to a website with troubleshooting info
see http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_f.htm#xp_floppy
Of course most of this assumes that you've actually got an A: drive.
As for a work around, how about the "dos" command
subst a: c:\temp
Also, in olden days, early versions of the DOS linker looked for files
on A:. Could you have such a file on your path or in your active
directory?
| |
| Donald Tees 2004-03-31, 1:31 am |
| JerryMouse wrote:
> Donald Tees wrote:
>
>
>
> Keep thinking.
>
> On my machine I have a diskette in the drive. Pgm never writes anything. Why
> the program would want a floppy drive disk access between letters in a word
> is a marvel.
>
> I can unplug my floppy drive and re-create the customer's symptoms (W-A-Y
> slow...).
>
> XP doesn't have a config.sys file. XP does, however, allow one to move drive
> letters around, sometimes at random.
>
Thats a pain.
Donald
| |
| John Simpson 2004-03-31, 5:30 pm |
| I did 5 years of hard time with Realia COBOL. It doesn't take a lot to make
it misbehave. Have you tried calling their useless customer service
(Computer Associates)?
"JerryMouse" <nospam@bisusa.com> wrote in message
news:mIqdnU-1lccUa_TdRVn-gQ@giganews.com...
> Facts in the case:
>
> Old DOS Realia COBOL program, only when running under XP, attempts to
access
> floppy drive for no apparent reason. Same program does not give a fig
about
> the floppy drive under Win9x, Win2k, or WinNT.
>
> Oh well, just an oddity. The old DOS program is "mature" and is being
phased
> out. Fuggedaboutit.
>
> Wouldn't you know: One customer gets new Compaq computer, XP installed,
and
> the computer doesn't even HAVE a floppy drive.
>
> You guessed it, program barely runs - fifteen seconds between keystrokes,
> three minutes to load, all on a lickety-split computer.
>
> Another of the customer's machines (Win98) networked to the new Compaq
still
> runs swell (the database resides on the new, XP, machine).
>
> Does anybody know:
>
> a) What's going on?
> b) A circumvention?
>
> We're going to try adding an antiquated floppy drive to this
> up-to-the-minute computer if we don't get a clue pronto.
>
> Thanks for thinking about this.
>
> Jerry
>
>
| |
| Joe Zitzelberger 2004-03-31, 9:30 pm |
| In article <mIqdnU-1lccUa_TdRVn-gQ@giganews.com>,
"JerryMouse" <nospam@bisusa.com> wrote:
> Facts in the case:
>
> Old DOS Realia COBOL program, only when running under XP, attempts to access
> floppy drive for no apparent reason. Same program does not give a fig about
> the floppy drive under Win9x, Win2k, or WinNT.
>
> Oh well, just an oddity. The old DOS program is "mature" and is being phased
> out. Fuggedaboutit.
>
> Wouldn't you know: One customer gets new Compaq computer, XP installed, and
> the computer doesn't even HAVE a floppy drive.
>
> You guessed it, program barely runs - fifteen seconds between keystrokes,
> three minutes to load, all on a lickety-split computer.
>
> Another of the customer's machines (Win98) networked to the new Compaq still
> runs swell (the database resides on the new, XP, machine).
>
> Does anybody know:
>
> a) What's going on?
> b) A circumvention?
>
> We're going to try adding an antiquated floppy drive to this
> up-to-the-minute computer if we don't get a clue pronto.
>
> Thanks for thinking about this.
>
> Jerry
>
>
Share a directory on the hard drive and mount it as "A:"
| |
| Thane Hubbell 2004-04-02, 12:30 am |
| I've seen this.
I didn't try to solve it.
I like the SUBST idea.
I think you might also get somewhere setting compatibility mode for
the EXE to Win95.
"JerryMouse" <nospam@bisusa.com> wrote in message news:<mIqdnU-1lccUa_TdRVn-gQ@giganews.com>...
> Facts in the case:
>
> Old DOS Realia COBOL program, only when running under XP, attempts to access
> floppy drive for no apparent reason. Same program does not give a fig about
> the floppy drive under Win9x, Win2k, or WinNT.
>
> Oh well, just an oddity. The old DOS program is "mature" and is being phased
> out. Fuggedaboutit.
>
> Wouldn't you know: One customer gets new Compaq computer, XP installed, and
> the computer doesn't even HAVE a floppy drive.
>
> You guessed it, program barely runs - fifteen seconds between keystrokes,
> three minutes to load, all on a lickety-split computer.
>
> Another of the customer's machines (Win98) networked to the new Compaq still
> runs swell (the database resides on the new, XP, machine).
>
> Does anybody know:
>
> a) What's going on?
> b) A circumvention?
>
> We're going to try adding an antiquated floppy drive to this
> up-to-the-minute computer if we don't get a clue pronto.
>
> Thanks for thinking about this.
>
> Jerry
| |
| JerryMouse 2004-04-02, 8:30 am |
| Thane Hubbell wrote:
> I've seen this.
>
> I didn't try to solve it.
>
> I like the SUBST idea.
>
> I think you might also get somewhere setting compatibility mode for
> the EXE to Win95.
>
>
Thanks for confirming I'm not batty. Compatibility for 98 & 95 doesn't seem
to change anything.
As it turns out, the customer DOES have a floppy drive (it just didn't look
like one). This is the same customer who was astounded that the replaced
computer had a tape drive.
Anyway, the circumvention is to simply put a blank diskette in the drive.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
| |
| Richard 2004-04-02, 9:30 pm |
| "JerryMouse" <nospam@bisusa.com> wrote
> Anyway, the circumvention is to simply put a blank diskette in the drive.
Expect a support call: "I just rebooted and it says 'boot sector not found'".
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