New EMF printer class and Windows 95

[Marco Turco]

Hi,
a customer reported me a problem after installed my app with the new EMF printer class (March build).

My app crash at startup and this problem appairs only on a Windows 95 OS.

The error is "Application started with error" SHELL32.DLL:SHINVOKEPRINTERCOMMANDA link not found.

Then another error "A device is not connected"

See the error image at www.softwarexp.co.uk/beta/error.gif

I think this api call is not supported on Windows 95
but I can't make any test because I haven't a Windows 95 OS to check it.

Any ideas ?

Thanks in advance.

Best Regards,

Marco Turco

[Antonio Linares]

Marco,

As a workaround you may define these functions in your PRG:

function SHFILE() ; return nil
function SHEXITWINDOWS() ; return nil
function SHABOUT() ; return nil
function SHFILEPROPERTY() ; return nil
function SHPRNPROPERTY() ; return nil

[Marco Turco]

Hi Antonio,
which is the fwh module where you call these functions ?
I need to deactivate them only if a Win95 OS is running.

Marco

[Antonio Linares]

Marco,

The module is shfile.obj but its source code is not provided.

We will fix it here

[modicr]

Hello!

IMHO another solution is to install Internet Explorer 4 or greater,
which updates shell32.dll (and other important system files)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/defau ... rsions.asp
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~geoffch@ ... rsions.htm

Regards, Roman

[Antonio Linares]

Marco,

Could you try Roman's proposal ?

[Marco Turco]

Antonio,
I can't try it because I haven't a Win95 installed,
I will send the Roman's tip to my customer.

However a tipical user with (still) Windows 95 often neither hasn't a internet connection to download an update so I think a built-in solution into the Fwh libs (if possible) could be prefereble.

Thanks Roman and Antonio.

Best Regards,

Marco

[modicr]

Hello!

It's nice (and rare) to see that your company still supports Windows 95 users.
BTW, here is an interesting recent post in delphi newsgroup:
End of support Windows Playstation

> Anyone still supporting Win 98, 98SE, Me apps?

Some statistics for your amusement:

Win 95 - 163 active customers
Win 98 - 11074 active customers
Win ME - 531 active customers
Win 2000 - 3105 active customers
Win XP - 15230 active customers
Win XP-SP2?? - 255 active customers

Active customers are mainly small and medium size business in Brazil.

And recent news: http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?s=4771988

The radar helped the meteorologists at the Weather Service issue the warnings and track the progress of the historic storm. But now, that same radar is 11 years old and the technology attached to it is dated.

"The computers that are really from the early ‘90s, and we will be upgrading and switching out old DOS and Windows 95 with Red Hat and Linux computers,” said Mike Heathfield of the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids.

The upgrade is unprecedented and comes at a time notorious for severe weather in West Michigan. The National Weather Service will be shutting down one of its largest eyes on the sky for five days; five days with little to no radar.

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2006A ... 035851.htm

This is intresting, for I know of many small businesses (that employ less then 250 people total) that are still using windows 95/8 along with NT 4.0 as the server OS.

All these businesses choose to stay with these antiquated operating systems because it saves them money.

The question is how namy are there through out the US, or the world for that matter, and will they choose Security over profits?

Anyhow, I recommend to all Win95 users to apply the following recipe:
http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/windows_95/

But, there is one caveat, as described at
http://www.screencalendar.com/faq.html#f16

Question 16: The program does not start and the following message shows up on my desktop: "The procedure entry point SHGetSettings could not be located in the dynamic link library shell32.dll" What should I do?

Answer: I'm sorry, but probably your Windows or Internet Explorer versions are old. The Microsoft recommendation is below:
SHGetSettings
Version 4.71 and later of Shell32.dll
Windows 95/98: Requires Windows 98 (or Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 4.0 or later).
All systems with Internet Explorer 4.0 or 4.01 will have the associated version of Comctl32.dll and Shlwapi.dll (4.71 or 4.72, respectively). However, for systems prior to Windows 98, Internet Explorer 4.0 and 4.01 can be installed with or without the integrated shell. If they are installed with the integrated shell, the associated version of Shell32.dll will be installed. If they are installed without the integrated shell, Shell32.dll is not updated. In other words, the presence of version 4.71 or 4.72 of Comctl32.dll or Shlwapi.dll on a system does not guarantee that Shell32.dll has the same version number. All Windows 98 systems have version 4.72 of Shell32.dll.

So, according to the icons on desktop, in your case IE 4 or newer is
already installed, but it was not integrated into shell, so shell32.dll remained
old. You can update it as described here:
http://oldfiles.org.uk/lightspeed/Active_Desktop.html
In the page above, there is a link to English version of Ie4shl95.cab:
(which includes explorer.exe and shell32.dll version 4.72.3612.1700)
http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/m ... 4SHL95.CAB

It is easy to guess locations to other language versions (for example Slovenian, Italian and Portuguese, respectively):
http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/m ... 4SHL95.CAB
http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/m ... 4SHL95.CAB
http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/m ... 4SHL95.CAB

After install, do not enable (e.g. disable) Active Desktop and set folder
options to classic view! Good feature of this update is Quichk Launch toolbar.

Finally, you can update shell32.dll to version 4.72.3812.600
(IMHO this is the same version as on Windows 98SE+IE6SP1)
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/d ... efault.asp

P.S. How many Win95/3.11 customers do you have?

Best regards, Roman

[Marco Turco]

>P.S. How many Win95/3.11 customers do you have?

I don't support Win3.11 anymore but 40-50 customers (on about 5000) still have a Win 95 OS.

I spoke with a Win95 customer just today and all runs fine after I removed these functions.

I will try now to make my company the leader as Win95 software supplier


Best Regards.

Marco Turco

[modicr]

Hello!

>P.S. How many Win95/3.11 customers do you have?

I don't support Win3.11 anymore but 40-50 customers (on about 5000) still have a Win 95 OS.

I spoke with a Win95 customer just today and all runs fine after I removed these functions.

I will try now to make my company the leader as Win95 software supplier

Long live Windows 95!

BTW, here are two cool pages about Win95:
"Thoughts of a Windows Purist"
http://home.pacbell.net/drakcap/Purist1.htm
"ERPMan's Windows 95 SP1 & OSR2.x System Updates Page"
http://erpman1.tripod.com/win95upd.html

Best regards, Roman

[James Bott]

In my experience Windows 95 has terrible memory management. I had lots of crashes with my FW apps (16bit) under Windows 95 which caused me a lot of tech support. I never had the same problems under NT, 2000, or XP.

James

[modicr]

Hello!

Very true! There are two problems with 9x: Limited memory
for system resources and:
http://www.apptools.com/rants/resources.php

Some applications, however, do not behave correctly. They may not free all the resources they allocate. This is called resource leakage. In this case, a block of memory is marked by the operating system as being in use and it cannot be used by the operating system, or any other application. When this happens, the only way to recover that area of memory is to reboot the computer.

While Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me operating systems improved memory management immensely over Windows 3.1, they were still designed for the home user. They were never intended to be a serious development platform. Encountering errors is a part of software development. An operating system that is not fault tolerant has no place in the software development environment. If you develop software, or web sites using a serious development tool, you should be using Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP.

Roman

[R.F.]

PMFJI:

As Far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, 32 bits apps will not work under Win95 or they will work in a defective way.

In my experience the (x)Harbour programs fails a lot under Win95, that's why we encorage our customers to use Win98 SE or higher.

[modicr]

Hello!

Of course 32-bit apps are working OK in Windows 95. But you are absolutely correct about upgrading Windows 95 to Windows 98/SE/ME:
http://aumha.org/win4/a/memmgmt.php

Memory management in Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition (WinME) is dramatically improved over what existed in Windows 95. It is so much improved that, for nearly everyone, nearly all the time, the best recommendations on how best to optimize memory usage in Win98 is: Let Windows handle it.

One improvement in VCache management in Win98/ME over Win95 is that Win95 had a bug that kept VCache from releasing RAM when it was needed. VCache would just keep growing sometimes, and the amount of available RAM would diminish accordingly, forcing more swap file activity (using the hard drive as a substitute for RAM). This is the famous “memory leak” of Win95. The user’s solution in Win95 was to put MinFileCache and MaxFileCache lines in the [vcache] section of the SYSTEM.INI file to control the size of VCache. This was sometimes a great help (especially on the 12 MB, 16MB, and 32MB systems which were the vogue in Win95’s heyday). But, in Win98, this problem was fixed (with further improvements in Windows 98 Second Edition, that carried over into WinME), and these [vcache] lines are not needed. Not only are they not needed, they actually get in the way in Win98/ME. In Win95 they improved performance, but in Win98/ME they decrease performance, because of a second improvement that was made in memory management for Win98 — to be discussed in a moment.

BTW, I run successfully µTorrent client in my virtual Windows 95B machine:
http://www.utorrent.com/faq.php#Does_.C ... _of_RAM.3F

Q:Does µTorrent work on a 486 with Windows 95 and 14MiB of RAM?
A:Yes, so long as you apply the Winsock2 update. You may have to raise the GUI update period, and generally run the client with the UI closed, though.

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/8158

* Unicode support: The same executable can be used both in Unicode mode (windows 2000 or later) or in ANSI compability mode (windows ME or earlier). This is a quite unique feature for native Win32 programs. Unicode is a relatively new universal way of representing characters inside the computer, which means that µTorrent is compatible with foreign torrents (such as those with chinese filenames), while still being able to run properly on old platforms. Support for old platforms like Windows 95 is an important goal for us, not because the user base is there, but it shows that we care about how the application performs for all users.

and eMule 0.45b client:
http://oldfiles.org.uk/lightspeed/eDonkey.html

The backbone of the eDonkey network is a group of servers disseminated around the world that are running a software called Lugdunum. These servers keep track of what files are shared by which clients and allow each individual client to search the network and connect to each other to transfer files. The current version of this software is 17.10. This version implements new protocols that will cause older eDonkey clients to receive the following message: Your client is too old, please upgrade it to last version. If the server your client is connected to gives you this message, all further request from you will be ignored resulting in no traffic and no search results from the eDonkey network. For most people the solution is to simply upgrade to the latest version of the client they use, but for Windows 95 users, this is a problem since the latest version of their client simply will not run on their system. The newest version W95 users can run are eMule 0.45b or Shareaza 2.1.0.0 (i won't cover other possible clients here at this time).

Cheers, Roman