Platinum 4.6 & XP Problems

[rtyson]

The problem I have is that when I open Platinum 4.6 on the one XP machine in our accounts department it comes up with the following message:

Unable to locate PFW message file '\pfwres\\pfw.msg'

I have tried numerous reinstallations and removal of the product all to no avail.

This problem may be registry based, due to some fixes that I had to manually enter to resolve a MS Access/XP/Crystal Reports error on this machine.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[toronto]

We also get this message on one of our Windows 95 machines:

Unable to locate PFW message file '\pfwres\\pfw.msg'

Other workstations (one with Win XP) don't get the message. The user who gets this message generally retries, then Platinum loads. At worst, he may have to reboot.

I have also reinstalled Platinum for this user, but the message continues sporatically. I had thought it had something to do with a Windows 95 registry issue, however, it looks like it's not just Win 95. Did you ever report this to Best Software?

 

[rtyson]

I haven't reported to Best Software, but I did spend all of yesterday working on this issue, to the point that I installed anew Platinum onto another machine to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong.

My conclusions are that the problems are related to chopping and changing the registry for the MS Access XP/Seagate Crystal Reports conflict issues.

I have found the nature of the issue and what it appears to involve, it is to do with access of the Platinum data.

With the case that you have outlined in your message I do have several questions:

* Are you using 3com networking equipment, with the latest network card driver?

* Are you using switches or hubs?

* What version of Windows 95 is it, is it OSR2 or 95b?

* Does this machine use a script to logon to the network, or is it mapped manually?

* Are you using the included Btrieve engine for Platinum or are you using Pervasive SQL?

* Does this machine have the Client for Microsoft Network Logon options set to "Logon and restore network connections"?

* If none of the above work, one thing I have found with all versions of Windows 95 (especially with Genius network hardware) the data packets or MRU are confused and the networking runs slowly and unreliably. A quick fix I have found around this is a utility called ISpeed, this is designed for dial-up PPP connections, but I have found that running it across a LAN adapter sometimes resolves issues. This only works on 95/98 on trying this across XP, NT and 2000 it either has no affect or slows things further.

Good luck.

 

[zulueta]

Hi rtyson,

I was wondering if you could help me out. I am currently using PFW 4.6a. Is it possible to run PFW 4.6a on a Windows XP? I thought it was not possible because XP cannot run 16-bit applications. In addition, is your PFW installation on XP stable?

You mentioned that you made a lot of manual fixes to make PFW 4.6 work on XP. Would you have a documented installation instructions that you could email? My email address is z_zulueta@yahoo.com

thanks.

 

[Mosiah]

PFW 4.6 is not supported on XP. PFW 4.8a is the first version supported on Win 2000, and it should probably work OK on XP too. Problem could easily be the 16 bit code problem mentioned above -- PFW didn't move to 32 bit code until 4.8a (and even today some portions of Customization Workbench are still 16-bit).

 

[kruelkop]

Try adding that user to the local admin group on XP, that worked for me on W2K