ID: Q96154
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft(R) Technical Support Application Note (Text File)
FP0913: INSTALLATION QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Revision Date: 9/93
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| WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR |
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| copied and distributed subject to the following conditions: 1) All |
| text must be copied without modification and all pages must be |
| included; 2) If software is included, all files on the disk(s) |
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| Copyright (C) 1993 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved |
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allowing the installation of optional components?
A. If you have terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) programs running,
you may want to remove them. Sometimes in low-memory
conditions, the installation program is unable to determine
whether to run the Standard (FOXPRO.EXE) or the Enhanced
(FOXPROX.EXE) version to complete the installation. For more
information on installing optional components not specified
during installation, see Question 2 ("How do I install
addtitional files that I did not specify during
installation?").
installation?
A. Restart FoxPro by typing FOX at the MS-DOS command prompt and
pressing the ENTER key. Insert any one of the product disks in
the floppy disk drive and type the following command in
FoxPro's Command window:
do install
You will then be prompted to insert the disk or disks that
contain the additional files that you want to install. If you
attempt to install from a drive other than drive A, you will be
instructed to select another source drive after the "Abort,
Retry, Fail?" message.
A. You could have an anti-virus detection program running or an
old video driver installed. Try using a different video driver
(for example, use VGA.DRV from Windows) and running with a
minimum CONFIG.SYS file and AUTOEXEC.BAT file. (For more
information on CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT files, see your
MS-DOS documentation.)
A. You may notice a substantial reduction in performance when
SMARTDrive is loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file. In particular, the
/DOUBLE_BUFFER switch can adversely affect performance. This
performance degradation does not occur when SMARTDrive is
loaded in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. However, some systems require
SMARTDrive to be loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file for
compatibility. For example, when a permanent swap file is used
on a SCSI drive, SMARTDrive must be loaded in the CONFIG.SYS
file in order to allow Microsoft Windows to load.
5. Q. What are the recommended BUFFERS= and FILES= settings for
running FoxPro for MS-DOS?
A. For best performance with FoxPro when SMARTDrive is loaded, use
BUFFERS=10 in the CONFIG.SYS file. Using more than 10 buffers
takes away valuable memory that FoxPro could use for
processing.
If you do not use a disk-caching program such as SMARTDrive,
you should allocate enough MS-DOS buffers to hold all the
directory entries in the subdirectory where you will be
working. BUFFERS=40 is usually sufficient as long as the number
of files in a subdirectory remains below 250.
The value used in the FILES= statement should always be at
least 10 more than the greatest number of files that you will
have open at one time. We recommend a minimum of 40.
Interface (DPMI)?
A. Yes. FoxPro 2.5 works with DPMI-compliant memory managers, such
as Microsoft Windows. If you use a DPMI memory manager, you can
control the physical memory that FoxPro uses by specifying the
MEMLIMIT option in your CONFIG.FP file.
A. The time required to load and start FoxPro relates to the
physical size of FoxPro, the length of the PATH statement in
effect, the number of items that must be sought at startup, and
other factors. Many of these items are under your control. For
a complete discussion of these issues, refer to the "Optimizing
Your System" section of the "Installation and Configuration
Guide."
correct this problem?
A. This error message can be eliminated by using one or more of
the following methods:
- Increase the FILES= setting in the CONFIG.SYS file.
- If you are using a Novell network, increase the FILE HANDLES
setting in the SHELL.CFG file.
- If you are using the MS-DOS Share program, increase the number
of files and locks. For example:
share /F:4096 /L:500
correctly, but when I load the Extended version, I receive the
error message "Incompatible memory manager." What causes this
problem?
A. This error can occur if your memory manager is improperly
configured. Verify that the memory manager is configured to
create expanded memory. For further information on the Extended
version of FoxPro, please refer to the "Optimizing Your System"
section of the "Developer's Guide."
10. Q. I receive the error message "Run command failed." How can I
correct this problem?
A. This error is caused by one of the following conditions:
Microsoft FoxPro for MS-DOS cannot find the COMMAND.COM file.
If this is the case, use SHELL= with the /P parameter in your
CONFIG.SYS file to specify the location of the COMMAND.COM
file.
-or-
If the location of COMMAND.COM is explicitly given in the
SHELL= statement, FoxPro does not have enough conventional
memory to execute the SHELL command. If this is the case, use
FoxSwap to execute the command. For example, use RUN /0 DIR
instead of RUN DIR. (RUN /0 automatically makes all available
conventional memory accessible.)
11. Q. Why do I have several files with the extension .TMP on my hard
disk?
A. Every time you run Microsoft FoxPro for MS-DOS, it creates
temporary (.TMP) files. These files are automatically deleted
when you quit FoxPro with a normal shutdown. However, the .TMP
files will not be erased if you reboot the machine while FoxPro
is running or if you don't have file-deletion rights in the
directory where the files reside. To remove the .TMP files,
exit FoxPro, acquire file-deletion rights for the directory
where the .TMP files are, and then delete the .TMP files.
12. Q. When I try to start a second instance of FoxPro 2.5 for MS-DOS
under Windows, I get the error "Cannot access file at this
time." This only happens when I am running multiple instances
of the same copy of FoxPro on a stand-alone machine. What
causes this problem?
A. This problem is caused by an incompatibility with the MS-DOS
Share program. To work around this problem, do one of the
following:
- Mark the FOXPRO.EXE file as read-only.
- Run FoxPro under Windows for Workgroups.
- Run a copy of FoxPro for MS-DOS from a network location.
13. Q. I'm running Microsoft FoxPro 2.5 for MS-DOS, under Windows.
What memory allocation options are available with the PIF
settings?
A. In the Memory Requirements section of the PIF Editor, KB
Required and KB Desired can both be set to -1. This tells
Windows to give all available memory to an MS-DOS-based
application. This doesn't mean that the MS-DOS-based
application gets more than 600K of memory, but it gets as much
conventional memory as you had available before starting
Windows (minus some conventional memory that Windows itself
occupies).
Changing the EMS Memory and XMS Memory sections tells Windows
whether or not to provide the MS-DOS-based application an
Expanded Memory Specification (EMS) or Extended Memory
Specification (XMS). However, this does not allow an
application that doesn't support EMS or XMS to do so. Only
applications that can use EMS or XMS will be able to access
additional memory. It's important to note that once you tell
Windows to create EMS or XMS for an application, it does so
whether the application can use it or not.
If Exclusive is selected in the Execution section, no other
application, be it Windows or MS-DOS based, can run when the
exclusive application is the current application.
The Advanced Options setting in the Multitasking Options
section is very important when you want an MS-DOS-based
application to run in the background. If an MS-DOS-based
application is very I/O intensive (reads and writes to disk,
performs asynchronous communication, and so on), it is
necessary to increase the Background Priority option value.
Unfortunately, there is no rule of thumb when it comes to the
exact value that should be used. It's important to note that
the larger the value for Background Priority, the slower other
applications will run while the MS-DOS-based application with
the higher priority is running in the background.
Additional reference words: FoxDos 2.50 ivrfax fasttips novel KBCategory: kbprg kbfasttip kbappnote KBSubcategory:
Last Reviewed: December 12, 1996