Difficulty opening programs in XP

Sorry, Ron, I should have mentioned, I have tried ALL the Compatibility options. No apparent difference

 

Thanks, Art

Do you have Compatibility Mode set to 'Win98' for those old applications?

Ron

Have you run a full antiviral and anti-malware (Spybot, Adaware) scan lately?

When the problem occurs, open Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del) and see what process is hogging the CPU time, aside from System Idle Process. That may tell you if some other app is conflicting with the pokey ones.

Ron

Additional info. The XP machine was bought in Feb 2005, and performed normally, except for the typing problem, for about a year. Then the above difficulties.

Art

With Designer hung, WOWEXEC.EXE and DS40.exe(Designer) are indented and both 00 under CPU and blank under Mem Usage. When Designer finally opened, these columns remained unchanged. Similar results when attempted to open 123 file.

ntvdm.exe 47,740. sychost.exe 23,888, explorer.exe 24,292

My amateur status is showing. Help is appreciated.

Art

WOWEXEC.EXE is part of windows required to run old(er) 16-bit applications. Since these are all old apps from Win98, something about running 16-bit apps is causing problems. You should double-check that all of them are set for Win98 compatibility mode. Then try running a system file check:
click start>run
type in: sfc /scannow
(space between sfc and /)
click ok

sfc will replace any missing damaged XP system files. Insert the XP CD if sfc requests it. Reboot when it's done and try again.

Ron

Thanks Ron. I ran sfc.

Designer and Photoshop Elements now working normally.

No change in Lotus. Only one file seems to be affected.

Your help is much appreciated.

Art

:)

Check around on the net. There might be a patch to make Lotus behave better when running under XP.

Ron

Thanks Ron

On my next boot, back to square one. Designer slow in opening. Lotus slower. Photo Elements working fine. I noted it is not part of WOWEXEC.

Perhaps the following will help to determine why WOWEXEC programs are giving problems in my Inspiron 9200 XP. In fumbling around, I found a "solution". I used My Network Places to access Lotus 123 and Designer files with the same name (older versions) on the Dimension 98 machine. Click on those files and the programs open with the files from the XP machine.

Art Campbell

Art,
Sorry, but I don't understand your last post, aside from the fact that things are running slow again.

Ron

Ron,

The story of my life - I'm not undertood.

I have a network with Dimension running Windows 98, and an Inspiron running XP. Designer and Lotus 123 give no problems on the Win 98 machine.

Designer: On the XP machine, Designer opens very slowly, then is o.k.  This is true whether I open from desktop icons or by clicking on the file which I want opened.

If I go on the XP machine and through Network Places to the Designer files on the 98 machine, (the files are older versions of the files on the XP), click the file with the same name as the one I want  opened, Designer opens and brings up the Designer XP file of the same name. So, to summarize, Designer opens through my network but not directly on XP.

123: On the XP machine, 123 opens normally but will not open, or opens very slowly, one file (lets call it the problem file). However if I go through the Network Places, click on any 123 file on the 98 machine, the 123 program opens. And then I can open the problem file normally, no delays.

Art

Poor Art, nobody understands you... ;)

Sounding to me like maybe you don't have your network and file sharing configured correctly on the new machine.

Nobody understands me either. :)

Ron

See, somebody does understand you! :)

Happy configuring...

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 03-28-2006 10:07 AM