This is a really weird one.
I have two near-identical winXP machines, running a 1995 (!) win16 (possibly win32s) PCB design program called Protel PCB 2.8.
On one it all works. That machine was built maybe 10 years ago.
On the other, recently totally rebuilt using a fresh winXP install DVD with all the M$ updates incorporated, following a HD crash, the File / Open function doesn’t list the files in that directory:
The good one shows the *.pcb files:
I suspect it’s a missing DLL, in c:\windows or similar, but which one is used by win16 apps to implement the directory contents enumeration?
If the .pcb filename is manually typed in, it gets opened fine.
Possibly a .net framework.
Though I would have thought that they would update through windows updates.
Did .net frameworks exist in those days? I thought that was much more recent than 1995
I’m a bit confused! Peter says that he’s
winXP machines, running a 1995 (!) win16 (possibly win32s)
Are they running Windows XP, Windows 95 or Windows 3.1?
I’d thought Windows XP, but re-reading his post it could be any of the three!
Win XP SP3, all updates installed. But I haven’t explicitly installed any .net stuff, IIRC.
But .net wasn’t around in 1995 when this program was released.
It dates back to win3.1, though not that version. I think I started running it under NT4 which was about 1996.
I often need to open designs done say 10+ years before, and anyway the current version of the program is massively expensive – about 5k and anyway it doesn’t properly import old projects (the sales reps just say you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette…).
It is 100% functional under XP, except some keyboard shortcuts which no longer work.
I have the original install diskettes and they don’t contain any DLLs. I have also ran them, in the hope that they might install something, but it didn’t help. In any case, the installation has not been done from the diskettes since about 1999. When you go win3.1 to NT you can preserve installed apps but after that you always lose everything so when I went to XP I would have just restored the program directory in c:\program files and the .ini file in c:\windows. So I don’t think I ever did any DLLs.
The key to this will be knowing which bit of code does the win16 directory enumeration.
Are the drives the same format type? Trying to open from diskettes makes any differences?
Both are NTFS. All that stuff is however emulated for win16 – including FCB (DOS 8.3 naming etc) file access. Protel 2.8 works only with 8.3 filenames – same as all pre-win95 software.
I haven’t tried diskettes… not really practical but could test it.
Other ideas:
- monitor dll/files processes to inspect if any is missing or have other versions. There are many tools, Sysinternals and many other.
- does something related show in the XP Event Viewer, error or warning?
This reminds me a little of a problem I had a couple of years back, on an NTFS hard drive on Win7 (though it might have been WinXP).
I copied a file from a tablet to my PC using ftp. The ftp server was running on the PC, and wasn’t doing anything special: I had written it myself, and had been using it for about 13 years.
Windows Explorer never showed the file, even though the ftp server could list it, list the directory, etc. Searches for the file name produced nothing either. In the end I used ftp to delete it and copied it another way. I suspected (but never proved) that it was some weirdness to do with NTFS file permissions, i.e. Windows Explorer was running as a user who did not have access to the files.
In any event, you could eliminate this possibility by copying the files between PCs using a FAT32 drive (which knows nothing about file ownership).
As I say, I never convinced myself it was file permissions, so apologies in advance if this is a red herring….
Yes – definitely NTFS permissions in your case. I have had “corrupted” directories which could not be deleted – not even by another instance of windows. They could be renamed though. Only unix (one with NTFS write capability – not all have that) got rid of them. I think I used a CD version of Ubuntu a few months ago for this job.
I don’t think it is a permission issue in this case because if I manually enter the file name in that dialog box, it finds it fine. It just won’t list them in the file list.
