[First Choice] Program starting problem.

Hello,
On my presnt CPU with a Windows XP Pro operating system, I have been using a old Windows 3.1 program called First Choice for its simple database now for over 3 years without any problems. About 4 days ago, with no hardware changes, and the only software change recently was the updating of Intuit's QuickBooks-2002 to QuickBooks-2005. When I now try to start First Choice, it come up on a black screen with the following error message, "run-time error R6009 - not enough space for environment ". On my hard drive, I have GB,s of space and always around 550-650 MB of Ram. I reloaded the program to a new directory from the original dics,
and still get the same error message. I have tried making all kind of changes through the icon's "properties" of First Choice with no help to the problem.
In turn I took and burned the program onto a CD and loaded it into another CPU with Windows XP Pro that I have in the office, and the program starts up and runs great. Any help or things I might try to correct this problem would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You,
Richard

 

Your Win3.1 application will be running inside a VDM (virtual DOS machine) where your operating system has set up a small amount of memory to behave as if it were an old DOS PC with all the memory limitations that go along with that. The application will not be aware of any memory outside of that VDM space.

Not sure exactly what was changed with the software upgrade you did but we should be able to fix it.

Do you start the First Choice dB from a shortcut? If so, right-click the shortcut and click on the Compatibility Mode tab. Set it for Win95 (the oldest OS version available). If the app runs from a shortcut that looks like the one pictured (and no, I don't have it - I just whomped up a shortcut so I could post a picture), play around with the memory settings.

If none of that helps, open autoexec.nt in notepad, copy the contents, and paste the info here.

 

Hi Newt,
Yes First Choice is started by a short cut, for which I tried, tried and tried making changes from the "properties" tab on right-clicking on it. Have changrd about everything from default settings, and this includes the memory settings. Please find following the autoexec.nt at C:\Windows\System32
@echo off

REM AUTOEXEC.BAT is not used to initialize the MS-DOS environment.
REM AUTOEXEC.NT is used to initialize the MS-DOS environment unless a
REM different startup file is specified in an application's PIF.

REM Install CD ROM extensions
lh %SystemRoot%\system32\mscdexnt.exe

REM Install network redirector (load before dosx.exe)
lh %SystemRoot%\system32\redir

REM Install DPMI support
lh %SystemRoot%\system32\dosx

REM The following line enables Sound Blaster 2.0 support on NTVDM.
REM The command for setting the BLASTER environment is as follows:
REM SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330
REM where:
REM A specifies the sound blaster's base I/O port
REM I specifies the interrupt request line
REM D specifies the 8-bit DMA channel
REM P specifies the MPU-401 base I/O port
REM T specifies the type of sound blaster card
REM 1 - Sound Blaster 1.5
REM 2 - Sound Blaster Pro I
REM 3 - Sound Blaster 2.0
REM 4 - Sound Blaster Pro II
REM 6 - SOund Blaster 16/AWE 32/32/64
REM
REM The default value is A220 I5 D1 T3 and P330. If any of the switches is
REM left unspecified, the default value will be used. (NOTE, since all the
REM ports are virtualized, the information provided here does not have to
REM match the real hardware setting.) NTVDM supports Sound Blaster 2.0 only.
REM The T switch must be set to 3, if specified.
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 T3

REM To disable the sound blaster 2.0 support on NTVDM, specify an invalid
REM SB base I/O port address. For example:
REM SET BLASTER=A0

Thank You,
Richard

 

OK. Good.

Now open c:\windows\system32\config.nt in a text editor (notepad is fine but DO NOT use any sort of word processor). Add a line as shown in the below and it is case sensitive.

REM with your application or _default.pif). If the size from PIF file
REM is zero, EMM will be disabled and the EMM line will be ignored.
REM
dos=high, umb
device=%SystemRoot%\system32\himem.sys
emm=RAM
files=40

Save and close the file.

Open the PIF (shortcut) to properties again and give it 1024 of expanded memory.

I think it will work after those changes. If not, there are other tweaks we can do.

One thing to check for is the possibility that your dB has set up it's own config and autoexec files so do a search and see if you find others than just the config.nt and autoexec.nt we are dealing with. If so, for now rename them to filename-old.

 

Still a ongoing problem.

Hi Newt,
Did all of your steps with no success. Found another "autoexec.nt" in C:\Windows\Repair directory, and put "old" after it. Then I rebooted, and double checked with "notepad" that the extra line in both autoexec.nt and config.nt had the line addition in each as you told me to add, and both had the extra line in them as you told me to do.
I have run "chkdsk /f /r" and also ran the System file checker tool, sfc /scannow" to check on the protected system files of XP, and both checked out without any problems coming up. Also did a McAFee virus scan on my full drive, and that came up as no infected files.
Then I thought of a very similar program to "First Choice" that I have on the hard drive, and that is the first accounting program by Intuit, call Quicken that is a Dos-Windows 3.0 program that I did business accounting back in the late 1980's. It is like First Choice in that you just have to copy the directory to the drive and then put a short-cut to start it. As you know, it is a VDM running program also, and so I clicked the icon to see if it would operate. Well it runs perfect, for it is a program for its time that because 10's of thousads of checks written in the main file, it is a large file to load, and I went right into the main accounting file, and it had zero for problems.
Newt, you have come up with ways that I would not have known or thought of, but now I don't know what to try.
Thank You,
Richard

 

Since you have the other app that works, cheat a little.

I'm guessing the PIF for it points to specialized versions of config.sys and autoexec.bat that the app uses. They may well be located in the folder with the Quicken app. If so, you might solve your problem by either pointing your First Choice PIF to those files or else making copies in the First Choice folder (safer in case you want to make modifications) and running it that way.

If you still have the First Choice documentation, take a look thru it. Lots of the older install routines would add entries to your existing autoexec.bat and config.sys files to make the app run. You can just copy those entries to the files your First Choice PIF uses.

BTW - a trick I like to use to avoid confusion is to stay with the config.nt and autoexec.nt naming conventions but personalize each so you might have, for instance, autoexec-FC.nt and config-FC.nt to run First Choice.