DOS under XP

I am using Quickbasic programs that access the serial ports (COM1, COM2) under MS-DOS. I had no problems with WINDOWS 98. After upgrading to WINDOWS XP serial port calls don't work any more.
How can this be cured?

 

ludger - could be a problem with the way the app is trying to make the hardware calls.

The NT systems (NT4 and all the later ones) do not allow an app to work directly with hardware. There is a layer/utility/applet/thingy in there called the Hardware Abstration Layer (HAL) whose only function is to trap hardware calls, examine them and if they are found to be safe, to make the calls rather than letting the app do it.

Possible problems include unsafe calls that HAL won't allow and calls that confuse HAL so it tries to do the wrong thing.

As noted, you could try running the app in compatibility mode. That often works but not always. The command line app in XP that mimics DOS is very similar but absolutely not identical.

 

I initially wrote a large bunch of my engineering tools in QuickBasic and then later translated them into Visual-Basic-for-DOS. VBDOS was the object oriented GUI sucessor to QuickBasic. VBDOS only came out with the Version One original issue but it was quick and fabulous for my use.

So I did some checking around when Win2K came out to see if my Visual-Basic-for-DOS programs would still run in that system.
It was my understanding at that time that M$ intentionally maintained Win2k compatability (and therefore, likely WinXP compatibility) with Visual Basic for DOS but NOT for QuickBasic.

All my compiled VBDOS apps still work fine even in XP but the editor/compiler is getting quirky. I tried to continue writing engineering tools in VBDOS but eventually ran into enough hassle with XP that I eventually had to go and convert my apps to the Visual Studio packages. (I didn't know what hassle was until I started using Visual Basic 6.)

I have seen some hacks in the internet through the years to allow some of the earlier Basic packages to work in Win2K/XP but .... it's probably better that the dead are buried.

Good luck
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