An Old Problem Revisited

[Alex Balfour]

I provide a piece of freeware called Calendar Magic written in VB3, the
default installation directory being c:\Program Files\Calendar Magic.

On rare occasions (4 or 5 in the past two years) a user has reported
that, on trying to run the installed program, he received an error
message along the lines "Can't Run 16-bit Program" plus a reference to
one of Calendar Magic's files.

The workaround is simple -- re-install Calendar Magic to a folder with a
"short name" like c:\calmag with no embedded spaces. Thus the problem is
clearly connected with long/short file and folder names.

My question is -- why does it happen on RARE occasions on certain
Windows XP based systems but not on the other 99.99 ..%? I've done some
searching of old newsgroup postings through Google and the problem is
mentioned quite frequently but I've yet to see an explanation.

It's worth adding that I've used an XP based system to develop Calendar
Magic for almost two years now and the problem has never occurred on my
own machine.

Any one with any theories?

Alex Balfour

 

[davetest]

I provide a piece of freeware called Calendar Magic written in VB3, the
default installation directory being c:\Program Files\Calendar Magic.

On rare occasions (4 or 5 in the past two years) a user has reported
that, on trying to run the installed program, he received an error
message along the lines "Can't Run 16-bit Program" plus a reference to
one of Calendar Magic's files.

The workaround is simple -- re-install Calendar Magic to a folder with a
"short name" like c:\calmag with no embedded spaces. Thus the problem is
clearly connected with long/short file and folder names.

My question is -- why does it happen on RARE occasions on certain
Windows XP based systems but not on the other 99.99 ..%? I've done some
searching of old newsgroup postings through Google and the problem is
mentioned quite frequently but I've yet to see an explanation.

It's worth adding that I've used an XP based system to develop Calendar
Magic for almost two years now and the problem has never occurred on my
own machine.

Any one with any theories?

Alex Balfour

It's not due to installation on NTFS with the user turning
of 8dot3 (from the registry) filename support is it?

Dave

 

[Alex Balfour]

It's not due to installation on NTFS with the user turning
of 8dot3 (from the registry) filename support is it?

Dave

Dave,

Your suggestion sounds plausible but probably not as a result of any
explicit user action. Where do I find the relevant registry key?

Alex Balfour

 

[davetest]

Dave,

Your suggestion sounds plausible but probably not as a result of any
explicit user action. Where do I find the relevant registry key?

Alex Balfour

Alex,
See this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;121007
Dave

 

[Alex Balfour]

Alex,

See this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;121007
Dave

Dave,

Thank you.

Alex