I hope Tamar Granor will read it. It seems she may be familiar with Vista.
I have touched on this problem in my previous post. In VFP 9 Management Studio under Vista, the Command WIndow behaves like the mouse cursor/pointer when you set it up in slow motion and with traces. In addition it frequently bounces back to the place it started. It is unbelievably weird. It is very very, and I mean it, very slow!
Anybody knows how to handle it
Thanks.
I have VFP9 on two Vista machines here, one a desktop and one a laptop. Neither one of them display the behavior you are outlining in your post. You may have something odd loaded on your Vista installation that causes that to happen.
BTW, I don't know any other history of your Vista install except what you posted. I was wondering whether or not you are running the Aero GUI interface under Vista. I am running Aero myself on both machines I mentioned. But, I have heard that if a graphics card is not Aero capable or is marginal, some odd windowing effects can occur within Vista, like slow moving windows, etc.
Carl Warner wrote:
BTW, I don't know any other history of your Vista install except what you posted. I was wondering whether or not you are running the Aero GUI interface under Vista. I am running Aero myself on both machines I mentioned. But, I have heard that if a graphics card is not Aero capable or is marginal, some odd windowing effects can occur within Vista, like slow moving windows, etc.
This may be it. I have good hardware with some ratings in 4-5 range but the Video card got only 2.0. I deliberately always purchase computers with low grade graphic cards since I do not do much of high quality graphics, mostly business type.
I've got Radeon X300/X550. It is not Aero.
Mine is Business Vista.
Thanks.
Yes, that sounds like the issue to me.
I bought parts and built a test PC back in late 2003 to test the pre-alpha versions of Vista (Longhorn at the time). I went cheap on most everything. I think the video card was about $129 at the time only because I wanted more RAM than usual on it. I got 256Mb RAM on that particular video card. I still use that same PC today for a Vista Ultimate installation and that 256Mb RAM AGP video card only manages a 2.6 rating. But, evidently it's enough to not get adverse/ugly video effects when dragging windows around.
I recall reading or hearing about a guy with a laptop who had something similar to what you mention. And that was before Vista was released. Laptops are notorious for skimping on video where they use composite/built-in video where they "share" (more like rob) the RAM from youir normal machine working RAM. It's not unusual for them to steal 128Mb away from your 1Gb RAM leaving with a less than optimal sweet spot of RAM to run your machine.
I just bought the same video card I mentioned above recently for a different older PC and it was somewhere just under $70 from TigerDirect, a company I usually avoid because their prices are usually based on rebates you may never see.
YMMV...
Yes, that sounds like the issue to me.
I bought parts and built a test PC back in late 2003 to test the pre-alpha versions of Vista (Longhorn at the time). I went cheap on most everything. I think the video card was about $129 at the time only because I wanted more RAM than usual on it. I got 256Mb RAM on that particular video card. I still use that same PC today for a Vista Ultimate installation and that 256Mb RAM AGP video card only manages a 2.6 rating. But, evidently it's enough to not get adverse/ugly video effects when dragging windows around.
I recall reading or hearing about a guy with a laptop who had something similar to what you mention. And that was before Vista was released. Laptops are notorious for skimping on video where they use composite/built-in video where they "share" (more like rob) the RAM from youir normal machine working RAM. It's not unusual for them to steal 128Mb away from your 1Gb RAM leaving with a less than optimal sweet spot of RAM to run your machine.
I just bought the same video card I mentioned above recently for a different older PC and it was somewhere just under $70 from TigerDirect, a company I usually avoid because their prices are usually based on rebates you may never see.
YMMV...
I am listening. Thank you very much for sharing. It may be useful for me in other respects. Mine is DELL GX280. I am not sure but I think the video card is integrated. Less than a month ago they replaced the motherboard because I still have an extended warranty and I was struggling with my inability to get the Internet on XP. I just lost it all of a sudden. This is why I installed Vista after a week of struggle. I also replaced the power plant yesterday, now it is Silencer 470 Dell instead of the native 170W I think. Without additional power I could not get a second USB input on XP, now it is working. But this problem started way before yesterday. I've got 2GB of RAM though.
It is all very confusing.
Although this problem can be tolerated I want it to be resolved since every problem solved helps you to troubleshoot something else a few month later.
I also want to mention that I work with Visual Studio 2005 daily, move many windows around and could never see anything like this. t should be VFP-Vista related.
Thanks.
Don't ever make the mistake of thinking all development tools will run the same under any OS. Bad logic. VFP is totally different than Visual Studio.
Don't ever make the mistake of thinking all development tools will run the same under any OS. Bad logic. VFP is totally different than Visual Studio.
I don't quite understand the point. Once MS developed Vista it is their responsibility to make sure that ALL their software runs under it satisfactorily. It is not the case in many respects.
I want to add that for along time I've realized that developmentally VFP is a completely idiotic system. Just an example that is on my screen now. I opened up the VFP Management Visual Studio, fine. Clicked on my prg file that starts everything, including my forms and it begins to download objects. Immediately it breaks down:
"A problem has been encountered"
Error number 1940
Error message: Expression is not valid outside of WITH/ENDWITH
....
Line number 88.
Only ONE button is provided. And it is OK. I cannot cancel the run. another hundred such messages may follow.
It is not the first error sicnce my first click. The first one an object was not found (or a variable). There is a chance that the subsequent errors are results of the first one. No debug window comes up. No way to cancel this madness.
In the XP not everything worked, but great degree of it. Although a couple of month ago everything worked even in XP. It seems this idiotic package decays like radioactivity. At least that darn expression COULD work inside that WITH/ENDWITH block. It caused no trouble. I haven't made any code changes anywhere.
The only way to close it is to call Task Manager to kill the fox.
Loonacy.
Noiw, more trouble. I've decided to go all the way and keep clicking. Eventually new errors began to show up. One form is particularly irritating.
"Continue Executing Program
Choose:
YES to continue the program
NO - to suspend
CANCEL to EXIT program completely.
I click CANCEL and another error shows up and it loops and loops! Is it not betrayal of customer's expectations Why does it not work
I've posted on this particular issue at least three times. Every time someone comes out and says that it is NOT VFP fault but somehow mine. Even Cetin with all his kindness who has never accused anyone of anything said that.
Thanks.
I am faulting your logic that just because Visual Studio has no problem for you under Vista that VFP shouldn't either. If you want to get defensive about that, have at it. If you don't like the way MS suppports its products, you need to inform them. If you think a Windows error at bootup where it says click "OK" to quit and "Cancel" to debug isn't lunacy, then you haven't been paying attention. I get that on this particular PC every single time I re-boot. And I don't have the hours to waste to figure it out and I know it's a driver issue that is hidden by MS's choice of numerous catch-all processes named "svchost.exe".
VFP9 was released long before Vista ever came out. It was NOT designed with Vista in mind. Also, as I already mentioned, if you have an integrated video card in the PC that runs Vista, your "experience" with Vista's graphic's capabilities will be less than optimal. Just because Visual Studio hasn't shown you any of the same effects that you've seen with VFP9's Command Window doesn't mean you won't ever see those effects manifested in another way. VFP's Command Window is a unique animal. I am sure Visual Studio has no Command Window that functions like the one in VFP.
Your solution is to get a better graphics card in your development PC and any PC you intend to run your apps on under Windows Vista. Windows Vista likes stronger graphics than any Windows OS before it. If you can't guarantee you will have decent graphics, go back to Windows XP.
If you post your issue three more times (or 100 more times), that will still be my answer. A database system cannot overcome a hardware limitation imposed on it by the OS.
Your solution is to get a better graphics card in your development PC and any PC you intend to run your apps on under Windows Vista. Windows Vista likes stronger graphics than any Windows OS before it. If you can't guarantee you will have decent graphics, go back to Windows XP.
If you post your issue three more times (or 100 more times), that will still be my answer. A database system cannot overcome a hardware limitation imposed on it by the OS.
Yep, this is what I intend to do. It is a lesson I've learned since I started this thread. I also noticed some eificiency even in painting Visual Studio 2005 in Vista. I now relate them to what you've said. I want to call DELL one of these days and ask them to recommend a better Video card for me since I will be at a loss what to choose. They do not make this model anymore (GX280) but it is still very powerful for my purposes.
I cannot go back to XP. Overall XP is a much more inferior system once you've got used to Vista. The latter is much more secure and provides more options for everything. Installation of the OS was a piece of case as compared with XP which I've installed a dozen. In XP you may spend a day looking for all drivers to get it running.
On top of that I've lost Internet connection in XP and even a service call to DELL resulting in an hourly conversation could not fix it.
Alex--the error dialog you describe is _not_ a native VFP dialog. It's being displayed by some code you put in your project. (I'll guess that you used the Application Builder or Wizard to start your application and it's the error handler from there.)
If you want to see how the native error handler works in the development environment, try this:
1) Make sure you don't have any other error handler in place by issuing ON ERROR in the Command Window.
2) Create a program that contains the following line:
ERROR 11
3) Save and run that program.
You'll see a dialog with a title of "Program Error" and an error message within. There will be four buttons: Cancel, Suspend, Ignore, Help.
If you click Suspend, program execution halts and you can use the Debugger to figure out what's going on.
While this particular program is silly and was created just to demonstrate the point, the key idea is that the VFP IDE does offer plenty of debugging facilities. You have apparently set up a different error handling mechanism in your application that isn't designed to aid in development-time debugging, but to manage users' experiences at run-time.
Tamar
Tamar, many thanks. I will have to read it carefully but now I want to ask for help in a related issue.
I figured out a workaround, sort of. I went to XP, created a new project, copied most important files and DBs from the old one, opened up the main form and stripped it off of all not immediately needed amenities leaving only the DB part (the treeview and my own search engine). I ran it in the Management Studio in XP and finally it stopped giving me any troubles.
I decided to copy it to Vista antecipating a victory. Not yet. It showed up numerous this not found, that not found. They all point to FXT ( ) file. I think it is a file in the project that has a database of all objects or something. I remember vaguely tinkering with it before. There is a command that is supposed to rebuild it. I do not remember now.
My illiterate hunch is that my newly created project may be using the old fxt (or whatever) file from where the objects I generously cut off the Tabpages were not removed Is it possible As I said it began working in XP (I mean the castrated part), the whole thing works about 95% but it completely fails in Vista.
If what I posted makes sense, I would appreciate your comment. What I urgently need is the access to my VFP DB now.
Thanks.