An Olde Fashyoned Problem

[catgate]

A friend in the next village runs a little garage business and uses a laptop for much of his daily routine stuff at the garage. He has on it a Garage programme which is based on the old Sage software, and runs under DOS. (His whole system runs W98SE because of this.)

I had gone down to see him on Monday, and whilst I was there he asked me to have a look at his laptop and suggest what might be causing a problem he had.

The problem was that, when he fired up the Garage application, it opened up in a minimised window. It was centralise on the screen but was occupying only about a third of the total screen area.

When he came out of the application the full screen came back into use.

Obvious ... the PIF. so I edited the PIF for the application to "open maximised"... and it made no difference. So I did the same for the MSDOS PIF, and suddenly it made no difference again.

I realised that unless I was very circumspect I could spoil his day, so I left it in a usable (with spectacles) condition and resolved to ask the experts. So..can anyone make any helpful suggestions, please. The obvious one is "change to XP" but, in the words of the old time comedians, "I don't wish to know that, kindly leave the stage."

[-pops-]

Well, the question I would ask is - - - - - ?

All computers shuld have a backup. All business computers must have a backup for legal reasons, preferably a full system backup, in case of events such as your garage owner friend is now experiencing.

The old saying "it will never happen to me" is just not true - as your friend is now proving.

[catgate]

Well, the question I would ask is - - - - - ?

All computers shuld have a backup. All business computers must have a backup for legal reasons, preferably a full system backup, in case of events such as your garage owner friend is now experiencing.

The old saying "it will never happen to me" is just not true - as your friend is now proving.

Can I arrange a meeting so that you can explain your views?

The last pantomime was trying to find a printer that would print using straight ASCII/DOS text. Luckily I found two quite old ones (one actually unused).

Sad to say he has been using this application for years and has built his whole operation around it. The company who produced it are no longer in business and so there is no support for it. As a result I am dreading the day when it goes "off" in a big way. He will then, quite rightly, want something which does what he wants, rather than him having to alter his modus opandi to something that some ready made programme wants.

That spells trouble.

[r4may]

This may be of help

in the PIF set the screen properties to 'Full Screen' instead of 'Window'

for printing open the file in Word as ASCII/Dos text and print from word. You may have to set the page parameters to fit the text.

[catgate]

This may be of help

in the PIF set the screen properties to 'Full Screen' instead of 'Window'

for printing open the file in Word as ASCII/Dos text and print from word. You may have to set the page parameters to fit the text.

Thanks for that , r4may.

Sorry, when I said "so I edited the PIF for the application to "open maximised" ", I should have used the words used in the PIF, i.e "Full Screen".

As far as printing via Word is concerned, amongst other tasks, the programme prints out customer invoices and these are formatted in the programme, using a template very much like the dBase "report" format.

I have fiddled, and the only way round it I have found, to date, without a lot of juggling, is a little programme called Dosprint.

[cozofdeath]

Is this program being run in Windows (command prompt) or from DOS? Not sure if I completely understand what you mean but how about the start command. It gives all kinds of options on how to start a program, like minimized or maximized, whether in Windows or not. Hope it helps.

[expertec]

Eh... when the program is open, window sized, does Alt+Enter work to make it go full screen?

[catgate]

Is this program being run in Windows (command prompt) or from DOS? Not sure if I completely understand what you mean but how about the start command. It gives all kinds of options on how to start a program, like minimized or maximized, whether in Windows or not. Hope it helps.

It is installed from a CD and the installation creates an entry in the start up list and also a quick start icon (bottom left of task bar). In addition it also creates a .pif file to fire things up.

expertec Posted Today, 09:03

Eh... when the program is open, window sized, does Alt+Enter work to make it go full screen?

That needs trying. I am going to see him later today.

I had a phone call from him yesterday saying it had gone back to normal i.e. running full screen. I asked what he had done, and got back, " I just pressed a few keys over on the left hand side." I just wished that I had taken a similar logical approach.

It worried me somewhat, because this is the chap, or one of his men, who fitted a new turbo into my Merc C250TD a couple of weeks ago!!

[~Root~]

then its a MSDOS application, cant help you but you guys seem to be on the right track.

i would try just backing up the application and re-installing it. sounds to me like something a little deeper is amuck.