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DOS App 4-5 x Slower in WIN2K than WIN98

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RH610

Programmer
Aug 7, 2001
152
US
Have tried standard things like playing with the PIF and
control.nt and autoexec.nt; windowed vs. full-screen; among others. Are there any diagnostic tools that can trace WHY this DOS app is running so slow on WIN2K compared to WIN98? I am out of ideas.

Thanks
 
Hey Kronosmen, I am in the exact same position as you on the Kronos Application. Too much to upgrade but we would like to use the old one, resides on a novell server also. You got better luck than I did getting to run on win2k, I still haven't got it to run on a win2k machine I just installed it on, and I'm stumped.

If you are having problem with it being slow, maybe it's not the machine, it's win2k and how it reacts to novell. It doesn't like novell at all and takes forever accessing anything off a novell server. One other sugestion is to maybe installing the Microsoft Client for Netware instead of using Novell Client for Netware.

If you find out anything new about kronos let me know, I'll be checking on this thread once in a while.

 
Ken,

A solution is mentioned higher up in this post -- a program at I've never used it, but have heard it works well. Keep in mind your DOS program was designed to run in a non-multi-tasking environment, so it takes full control of the processor and waits for your next command, even when not doing anything. It's a tradeoff using an old program that works fine as designed -- but you're using it in a multi-tasking environment (which it wasn't designed for.)

Good luck...
 
Hey guys my company also has a problem with running dos based applications on windows 2000 or Windows XP NTVDM takes up 100% of the cpu ... I followed advice posted by silmarillion and downloaded the tamedos application ... and it really works. Thanks a million man
 
Just wanted to add my two cents in praising . I have been looking everywhere and asked everyone, even the software vendor (they have the same problem and they live with it !!!!).
This DOS accounting package was taking 100% CPU on W2K.
My client was asking me to put everything back to Win98.
With TAMEDOS I came out as a hero.
Thanks for the tip silmarillion !
 
Win2K has both cmd.com and cmd.exe. Ensure you are running your dos app using cmd.exe. cmd.exe is native to the 32 bit environment and is designed to make use of the speed provided by that environment. Cmd.com runs very slowly on Win2K.

Again, ensure you are running your dos app using cmd.exe.
 
I am using Dataease for mail mergeing letter and other forms of documentation. I was running windows 98 which i know has no problems with dos based programs. I have upgraded my computer to windows 2000 Pro and now i have a error message saying

The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction
cs:8e04 IP:ff15 op:65 63 6f 72 64
Choose close to terminate the application.

If any one can help.

Thank You

Night Crawler
 
I am using Dataease for mail mergeing letter and other forms of documentation. I was running windows 98 which i know has no problems with dos based programs. I have upgraded my computer to windows 2000 Pro and now i have a error message saying

The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction
cs:8e04 IP:ff15 op:65 63 6f 72 64
Choose close to terminate the application.

If any one can help.

Thank You

Night Crawler
 
I have run into this same problem, as with the rest of you on this forum. I had tried a few other things I had yet to see though. I was readyt o pull my hair out and I started really reading on how this dos emulator works. I tried the registry bit to make it work in seperate memory instead of shared but still didn't work. I did setup a bat file that uses the start command which starts a process and setup the process in seperate memory space and set the priority to high which seemed to speed the app up a bit. Not as Fast as before on the older machines but it was Tolerable. For anyone using a network shared printer I used the net use command to map the lpt1 port in the bat file so I could print through this old dos/novell software. I would complain but if it wasn't for Microsoft's screw ups such as this I wouldn't have a job!! ;)
Hope that helps atleast 1 other person out there!!
 
Night Crawler, Maybe you should try microsoft technet. I would start with Q245184 it says that you need to check the date and time of the command.com file. It may still be the file that was installed with your windows 98 and you need to copy this file off the win2k cd. Hope that helps!!
 
I had an App in Qbasic, which took me several years' spare time to do the programming. Now i moved the Qbasic.exe to an IBM thinkpad with WinXP. Qbasic would not show up in full screen mode. And Qbasic command "Screen 2" causes a general blackout of the screen. I have tried various program/memory settings in the PIF..as well as "compatibility", doesn't work out.. So what shall i do?
 
I wrote a DOS application, many months of hard work, well, could be done in Windows VB, but what a heck, assembly was faster and easier. Some customers are complaining about running in W2K and XP. I found out that the arguments passed at the command line (DOS/W98/ME) and parsed by my program from the keyboard buffer at segment address 80h and above, are not exactly there at W2k and XP, since the program parse trash. I don't have a W2K machine to test (it should be pretty easy to find out where the command line arguments go), so, any idea about the LOW memory usage of the W2K CMD.EXE when emulating DOS? mostly related to the keyboard buffer?

Somehow desperate and losing customers because of that. Again, thanks to Microsoft and its greedy owner. Do you believe in write something for windows right now? who ensures you it will be working on the Windows2003 version? would you bet your house and car on it? I won't. Hey Mr Gates, where is the so called COMPATIBILITY you always promissed? I have a program that runs in Win98 and DOES NOT in W2K, what will you do about it? nothing, right? thank you very much.

Peter L.
 
I think I may have a similar problem when running dos programs under cmd. I have some .exe dos applications which runs ok under Win Me, but when I run on Win 2000, it gives an application error: the instruction at "0x00402910" referenced memory at "0x00134000". The memory could not be read.

Is there any way to allocate more memory to the dos program when running in command prompt?
 
Your problem may not only be Win 2k. The problem seems more general to be the P4. Even the issues you raise above arise on NT.
We have problems with the EVO510 P4 1.7 processor, however the P4m does not appear to have the same problems.
This arose from Quetzal (16 bit) taking 5+ minutes to allocate a call. With this link we are also able to reproduce the dos edit problem..

However the changes to autoexec.nt and config.nt makes no difference, however Q article Q320694 shows problems with NTVDM that you can call Microsoft and download a fix.
We will load and tell you the results. Worth checking yourselves !!!

Regards
 
Just a quick one for this, within DOS edit, type in a load of text. If we are talking the same issue then the text appears a few "minutes" later.
If you waggle the mouse over the edit screen, the missing text may suddenly appear.
Give it a try...
 
Well the Q article above is a new ntvdm file. After a reboot this actually fixed our problems. Believe me this took a while to figure out, but was worth it.

Regards
 
DOS program execution speed in Win2k...
Everyone is talking about modifying the environment. Has anyone researched methods for modifying the programs instead? I'm a Turbo-Pascal/Delphi programmer and when my delphi programs get too CPU consumptive, I put an Application.ProcessMessages call in all of my tight loops which lets other programs get a share of the processor's attention. Other windows languages must have similar mechanisms.
My turbo pascal (dos) programs also contain tight loops, mostly involving keyboard and mouse polling. Is there any dos interrupt call which I could place in these loops to let Win2k share the processor's attention?
Not really hopeful that such an interrupt exists, but it suggests a different approach to the issue.
 
May someone e-mail to me the Windows 2000 FIX described in :
Q320694.
I have a dual P4 Xeon 2.2 GHz mainboard and it has the problem. I solve the problem just if I underclock the processors at 1.6 GHz. :-(
If someone can e-mail the FIX to me, I will be very happy, since I'm still waiting for a response from Microsoft.
My e-mail is: basaglia@inrete.it.
Thanks.
Paolix from Italy.

 
May someone e-mail to me the Windows 2000 FIX described in :
Q320694.
I have a dual P4 Xeon 2.2 GHz mainboard and it has the problem. I solve the problem just if I underclock the processors at 1.6 GHz. :-(
If someone can e-mail the FIX to me, I will be very happy, since I'm still waiting for a response from Microsoft.
My e-mail is: basaglia@inrete.it.
Thanks.
Paolix from Italy.

 
I have a Strange Problem running a DOS program in win2k, i have used both the 16-bit version of the command prompt (command.com)and the 32-bit version (cmd.exe) and both have provided the same problem with the program. What happens is the program loads fine, in full screen mode, but the mouse is restricted to the top left 1/4 of the screen, and seems as though the program is 100% mouse dependant this isn't much use. Also in windowed mode loading the program returns the message No VESA Driver - can't get one to work with my graphics card (geforce 2 400mx)anywhere. Any ideas?
Thankyou.
Jimi
 
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