Dos -> Win2000 problem

bazzjazz

Hi,

I am pulling my hair out with a problem I can't solve. Maybe someone here can help me out?

I have a client with an old dos package running over a network (Medical consultants). It ran fine when the pc's were win95/98 but we have upgraded the pc's to 2000/xp and therein lies the problem...

The program is running on a win xp box and is being accessed from win 2000 boxes and one win98 box. It runs fine when accessed from the win98 bo and mostly ok from the others except for one area:

When you try to access the word processing part of the dos system from a win2000 box, it takes approx 20 secs to display the contents of the wp folder. There are approx 4,000 files in the folder, each approx 1kb in size.

Win98 displays the same folder contents in about 2-3 secs.

I assume the issue is that win2000 is only emulating dos whereas win98 is running dos itself and is therefore talking to the dos package more efficiently.

Does anyone know of a workaround to speed up the access to this folder fron the win2000 boxes?

It is a small peer to peer tcp/ip network with DHCP.

Any suggestions much appreciated. This problem has been going on for a while and I would love to be able to finally sort it out!

cheers,

Barry McCabe

ntlbell

bazzjazz wrote:

Hi,

I am pulling my hair out with a problem I can't solve. Maybe someone here can help me out?

I have a client with an old dos package running over a network (Medical consultants). It ran fine when the pc's were win95/98 but we have upgraded the pc's to 2000/xp and therein lies the problem...

The program is running on a win xp box and is being accessed from win 2000 boxes and one win98 box. It runs fine when accessed from the win98 bo and mostly ok from the others except for one area:

When you try to access the word processing part of the dos system from a win2000 box, it takes approx 20 secs to display the contents of the wp folder. There are approx 4,000 files in the folder, each approx 1kb in size.

Win98 displays the same folder contents in about 2-3 secs.

I assume the issue is that win2000 is only emulating dos whereas win98 is running dos itself and is therefore talking to the dos package more efficiently.

Does anyone know of a workaround to speed up the access to this folder fron the win2000 boxes?

It is a small peer to peer tcp/ip network with DHCP.

Any suggestions much appreciated. This problem has been going on for a while and I would love to be able to finally sort it out!

cheers,

Barry McCabe

Yes it seems to be just the overhead of dos emulation causing the delay, I can't really think of anything to help bar keeping users that need to access it on windows 98 or maybe running DOS in a virtual machine on the XP machines?

I'll have a think about it!

bazzjazz

Thanks for the reply!

I tried instaling win98 on one of the new pc's and of cours it wouldn't recognise half the hardware so that was no-go.

How would I go about running DOS on a virtual machine? Is it a straightforward process?

The process would need to be pretty transparent for the users, who are not that computer literate at all

thanks for your help.

Barry

ntlbell

bazzjazz wrote:

Thanks for the reply!

I tried instaling win98 on one of the new pc's and of cours it wouldn't recognise half the hardware so that was no-go.

How would I go about running DOS on a virtual machine? Is it a straightforward process?

The process would need to be pretty transparent for the users, who are not that computer literate at all

thanks for your help.

Barry

It would probably a bit dirty, have a look at something like virtual pc and install DOS 6.xx

Basically all the user will have to do is click on the virtual pc icon and off they go.

Have you contacted the software vendor to see if there's anything they can do?

bazzjazz

The problem with the original vendor is that they no longer support the software and there is no one else in the country who does.

I apply sticky plasters to it whenever it acts up but the only reasonable solution is to upgrade to a modern software package, and there are a few available. Issues are cost and older non computer-literate users who have taken years to become comfortable with the existing system

I might try Virtual PC and see how it goes.

Thanks again for the input!

Barry

SouperComputer

try dosbox or BOCHS, both are open source and free.

ntlbell

dosbox is worth a go, I tried it to fix a similar problem and it was still too slow, never tried BOCHS

bazzjazz

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try them out. I see you can get a 45 day free trial of Virtual PC so I'll try that also.

Free or not isn't an issue as the client will be footing the bill, but ease of use will be critical as I don't want to have call-outs every day to tweak the system!

cheers,

Barry

Asok

off topic : By any chance would the vendor be keogh software?

bazzjazz

No, not familiar with Keogh Software..

Barry