>Why does the app not run under Win7 and why do you think the problem will be

>resolved by "upgarding" to VFP9.

>

>I have VFP6 apps that run fine under Win7

Sorry for my earlier outburst. Sytze is, of course, correct.

The most common reasons why an app created when VFP 6 was current won't run

under Win 7 would be:

1. The app writes data to its own "home" folder under C:\Program Files, and

then expects to be able to read that data.

MS, in its infinite wisdom, thinks it's a bad idea to let software write

data within C:\Program Files because it "might be a virus". It didn't occur

to them that malware authors can understand these rules as well as anybody

else and can write data to other locations--and cause executables to be run

from those other locations.

In any case, in this situation, Win 7 (and, I believe, Win Vista) will

"virtualize" the written data to a location inside the user's profile--that

is, they intercept any "write" commands and cause them to be executed

elsewhere. That works great--no error messages occur--but the app doesn't

know this was done and these latest and greatest operating systems are too

stupid to intercept any "read" commands and redirect them to the actual

location where the data was written to. At that point, many errors ensue.

You can turn this off, in Vista and Windows 7, via editing one or more

security policies. Stephen, no doubt, will jump in and say this is stupid

and unsafe. To which I respond, the malware authors are already miles ahead

of this and have long ago re-written their apps to bypass this trivia.

So you can either rewrite your app so it uses the proper Windows %whatever%

locations, or tell users to install your app in the root directory (ie.

C:\My App) or you can tell users how to turn this useless feature off.

2. There could, I think, possibly be some graphical issues in Win 7 with

the full-on "Aero" graphics system running. There were issues in VFP 9 with

this that had to be fixed; I'm not clear on whether they exist with VFP 6.

But users could be asked to use one of the older themes to see if that

clears up the problem. People running business apps shouldn't be expecting

things to be all pretty anyway...

3, Your installation doesn't deposit all of the required dependencies into

the folder where the application resides, and users are trying to run your

application as restricted users. Change your installation app to put all

the dependent files into the application folder (instead of into "\system"

or "\sytem32\").

4. There are issues with both medium-old-style "Windows Help" and CHM help

files in Windows 7; your installation app may need to deal with this.

5. The OS may be a 64 bit version; in this case, some things get installed

in the wrong locations. This can be Googled.

Ken Dibble

www.stic-cil.org

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