PROBLEM WITH XP OPENING SHARED FILES

[amatureo]

I have Win98SE and WinXPPro computers on a LAN running a DOS Foxpro 2.5 program. The program opens DBFs via a subprogram with:

USE &PFILE ALIAS &MALIAS SHARED

I'm having trouble with my XP computers only. They "sometimes" fail to execute the line, giving me an error 15 - "Not a database file". The file exists, is not corrupt, and can be opened with the 98 computers.

I've put a pause and retry loop in my Error Trapping program. "Sometimes" after a 10 second pause, the retry will execute the line correctly, but "sometimes" 6 retrys will all result in failure.

The file that fails to open is usually the same file. Its an often used file, but not one that is ever opened exclusively by other computers.

I don't understand why XPPro "sometimes" can't recognize and open the file that 98SE never has trouble with. I say "sometimes", because this is a random problem that I can't intentionally recreate or duplicate. I'd estimate that it happens maybe 1 out of 20 times the file opening is attempted.

I do have more that 10 computers on my LAN, but all database files are stored on a Win98 computer.

Any ideas?

 

[dbMark]

Please see thread182-1097091 for ideas. You will note that my post there suggested a review of ideas presented in thread182-1150762. Try following the links too. There can be several potential causes and your problem might be any one of them: opportunistic locking, buffering, patches needed for FP 2.6, patches for Windows, etc.

Once you have figured out which one was your problem, please post here what the solution was so we know it got fixed and so others can benefit.

 

[dbMark]

Needless to say there are two environments you're dealing with.

(1) A mixed network with different Windows operating systems. You would think it shouldn't matter, but it can, as you've found out.

(2) An application written in an old language. While I suspect your problem is the older mixed nextwork and not the application itself, FoxPro 2.x for DOS has been unsupported for 10 years, more or less. Time is working against you.

 

[gabrield]

Try to move your databases to a XP machine
There are some differences between locking in XP and Win98SE.

 

[amatureo]

I have more than 10 computers that access the databases, so I can't move the data to an XP machine unless I figure a way around the 10 user limit imposed by XP.

 

[FoxEgg]

This link might help.. I just Googled the problem.. and found it.

http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=1497&p=1

Before your post had no idea of this 10 limit.

I cannot vouch for this link, nor have I tried it...

Cheers

JF



I haven't tried it and

 

[amatureo]

I tried the tcpip.sys fix quite a while ago, when I tried to update my main data computer to XP. It apparently only influences outgoing connections, not share limits, so I'm still using a Win98SE computer for my data. I'm trying to avoid paying Microsoft for expensive server software.

I've had 15 to 20 computers on my LAN for a lot of years without any problem. The problems began recently when I upgraded more Win98SE computers to XP Pro SP2. I'd just go back to Win98SE but most newer software releases won't run on it.

The problem is extremely illusive. I've tried to create a set of circumstances to intentionally crash the system, but I can't create the problem on demand. It seems to occur almost randomly, but I know there is a reason, and a solution, so I'm pressing on.

Thanks everyone, for sympathizing with my plight. Maybe I'll try editing tcpip.sys on the workstation computers.

 

[amatureo]

For what its worth, I just thought of something else. The tcpip.sys patch is a TCP/IP tweak, and I'm using NetBeui for my LAN.