Need some old school help!!

[s_kinton]

My Mum uses an old program for her business which is dos based, so she is been limited to Win 98.

Clearly, this needs to change and I want to get the program working under Win XP at the least. She needs to buy newer hardware, printers etc.

When I try and run it in XP it opens a window for a split second and then closes. The only text I can read is 'echo off'. The program is run by double clicking a .bat file and I believe its programmed in foxplus????

Any ideas on how I can get this thing to run!? This is way over my head...

If I rename the .bat file to .txt the following is written:
CLS
ECHO OFF
CD STOCK
foxplus goc
CLS
CD\
CLS

[MaddAussie]

have a look at what the .bat file is trying to do, you will be able to open it with notepad

[s_kinton]

have a look at what the .bat file is trying to do, you will be able to open it with notepad

I wrote it in the opening post:
CLS
ECHO OFF
CD STOCK
foxplus goc
CLS
CD\
CLS

There must be a way to get these old programs working in XP.........

[blueball]

Have you tried running it in compatibility mode for Win98?

Firstly, create a shortcut to foxplus.exe

Then edit it (right click properties) to ensure that:

• You add goc to the end of the "Target" line (eg "C:\foxplus\foxplus.exe" goc)
• The start directory has STOCK at the end (eg C:\foxplus\stock\)

Then select the compatibility mode tag and force it to run as if it were win 98.

You do not need the batch file if you do it this way.

[GoNz0]

have you tried running it from a cmd window so it doesnt close once its finished ?

[latrosicarius]

bat files are not written in foxplus, they are written in any text editor. A bat file is a txt file renamed from ".txt" to ".bat". You do not need to rename it to open it -- simply right-click it and choose Edit or Open With > Notepad.

But all that aside, the only thing that bat file is doing is going to a folder called "STOCK" and running foxplus.exe with the argument of "goc".

Blueball is absolutely right, you don't need the bat file. Just find foxplus.exe in the "STOCK" folder, and right-click-drag it to the desktop to create a shortcut there. Then right-click the shortcut and go to properties. In the TARGET area, add the "goc" argument, OUTSIDE the quotes. You can also set compatability mode Win89 from the shortcut. Check out the following screenshot as a reference:

[s_kinton]

Wow. Thanks for all the help so far. I'll try whats written tomorrow and post back with the results

[Mblaster]

DOS Box may be a program to look at if you're still having trouble getting it working, I use it to run old games on XP/Vista.

[latrosicarius]

Thanks for the thanks

Mblaster brings up a great point though. There's no guarantee that compatibility mode will work.

DOSbox is an emulator of DOS so it is very likely to work, but it can be slow, so I'd recommend just trying compatibility mode first.

[blueball]

NB that the "start in" field should not have foxplus.exe at the end.

Well done on the images, I'd had a long day and it was all too difficult by that point

[s_kinton]

DOS Box may be a program to look at if you're still having trouble getting it working, I use it to run old games on XP/Vista.

I tried Dox Box last night. I mounted the c drive where the stock program was installed, but I typed in the .exe path it just said it was invalid and didn't do anything.

Am I using Dox Box right??