1996 Program suddenly malfunctioning-cursor off screen

[DebMo]

We have a program in our office that has been up and running since 1996. It was created using the Zachary code generator. Now for some reason the cursor is not falling on the fields in one of the onscreen pages when it is opened. Instead of being in the first field when the page is opened, the cursor appears in the last field.

No one has made any changes to this program for years and we are not even able to compile it on our current XP platform.

I thought that perhaps there was something wrong with the index so I did re-index the database but that didn't seem to help any.

Does anyone have a clue as to what the problem could be? I haven't programmed in Clipper for a decade now and am at a complete loss.

Thank You.

 

[rob444]

The program may not been changed but what has changed?
PC, OS, Video Card, Memory etc?

What was the last thing that changed before this behaviour and are you sure that you're virus free..?

Rob.

 

[DebMo]

Nothing has changed on the server where the program is kept. However, the head of the department that uses this program did have a computer crash last week. He is also the only person who keys information into the fields on the page that we're now unable to access.

It's not a problem with his new hard drive though because I also can't get into those fields on my machine. I'm thinking that maybe the program could have been corrupted when his hard drive crashed but he has stated that he was not actively working in the program at the time but may have had it open in another window.

I'm currently trying to pull the program files from last week's backup to see if it was working correctly prior to his hard drive crash.

Thanks for your input. Any other thoughts?

Deb

 

[TonHu]

a) Did you remove any leftover tempfiles (usually files without extension and lots of (hex)numbers in their names) from the application directory (on the server maybe), that could interfere with normal execution of the app,

and b) did you restore the proper autoexec.nt and config.nt (assuming Windows XP or 2000 on the workstation) settings to allow enough open files for the app?
(config.nt: files=121)
(autoexec.nt: SET CLIPPER=F115;E0)
This might prevent opening all databases and so not making available all dataentry fields, and so making some datafields length = 0, and so making it impossible to get the cursor into the fields?

HTH
TonHu

 

[JockMullin]

Good suggestions from TonHu, as usual.

Also check for .MEM files in the user's working folder and/or in the program's home folder.

Some programmers used to be fond of dumping/reloading current memory areas into files on disk and then reloading into memory rather than re-initializing or loading from databases.

If such files are out of sync or partially written, then results can be unpredictable when the app re-opens after a crash and you may have to restore them if they exist.

Jock