FastTips for FoxPro for MS-DOS: Installation Q&A

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
                                                      No Disk Included

The following information applies to Microsoft FoxPro version 2.5 for MS-DOS(R).

| INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT AND ANY SOFTWARE THAT MAY     |
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| the use of this Application Note. This Application Note may be      |
| copied and distributed subject to the following conditions:  1) All |
| text must be copied without modification and all pages must be      |
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| Application Note must be distributed together;  and  4) This        |
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|                                                                     |
| Copyright (C) 1993 Microsoft Corporation.  All Rights Reserved      |
| Microsoft, FoxPro, and MS-DOS are registered trademarks and Windows |
| is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.                            |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------|

1. Q. Why does the FoxPro installation process sometimes stop before
       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?").

2. Q. How do I install additional files that I did not specify during
       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.

3. Q. Why does FoxPro reboot during the installation process?

    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.)

4. Q. How does SMARTDrive affect FoxPro's performance?

    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.

6. Q. Does FoxPro 2.5 for MS-DOS operate with the MS-DOS Protected Mode
       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.

7. Q. What factors influence FoxPro's startup speed?

    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."

8. Q. I receive the error message "Too many files open." How can I
       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

9. Q. The Standard version of Microsoft FoxPro for MS-DOS runs
       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.

For additional information, refer to the "Learning More About PIF Settings" entry in online Help.

Additional reference words: FoxDos 2.50 ivrfax fasttips novel KBCategory: kbprg kbfasttip kbappnote KBSubcategory:

Last Reviewed: December 12, 1996