Speaking of Vista... first request 'does it run on Vista'

[GriffMG]

I got my first 'does it run on Vista' question today.

They (the existing customer) was tlaking about a VFP6 app - I've still a few of them - and I wondered if anyone had tried VFP on Vista yet?

B-)

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

 

[CouponPages]

So far my experience has been great... other than trouble printing in FoxPro 2.6 for DOS.

As a rule of thumb VFP6 apps will run, but because it is unaware of some XP and Vista features it will never be officially considered compatible by Microsoft.

Specifically, older VFP versions will not know about the newer themes and cosmetic features. In my own tests, I found that some of my controls were rendered in default colors, but the functionality seems to be fine.

I'm anticipating a flood of phone calls as clients get new PCs with Vista in the coming months. If nothing else, it can give me a chance to show them all the newest platforms.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Officially, Microsoft only supports VFP 9.0 on Vista (see

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa948854.aspx).

In practice, I doubt you'll have any problems with earlier versions, provided you don't try to do any fancy Vista-specific stuff.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[TamarGranor]

One area you may run into issues with Vista is in where you put your data. Applications are not permitted to write in the Program Files hierarchy.

Also, in meeting with the Fox team yesterday, they emphasized that they really want to fix any problems with Vista for Sedna/SP2. So if you are testing in Vista, please post any problems you find in the Connect website, so the team can deal with them.

Tamar

 

[GriffMG]

Tamar

That's interesting, I have a number of third party apps which write to the Program Files hierachy... I wonder of they will still run?

My own don't - fortunately

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

 

[Dan Freeman]

No, Griff, they won't.

This falls in the category of things they've been telling us for years not to do but never really enforced. It's why Word (for example) defaults to saving in "My Documents" instead of in the Word program folder.

 

[TamarGranor]

Actually, because of something called virtualization, things may continue to work, but the data won't be where you expect it. The big problem here is with shared data, because the virtual data goes under the particular user's hierarchy.

Tamar

 

[GriffMG]

I've come across 'virtualisation' before - Novell had it with NAL/ZEN - it sort of 'pretends' that things are in one place, when they are actually somewhere else - on a server most of the time.

It caused me all kinds of problems with VFP5, I had some references to my development environment (on a D: drive) which were intercepted by the NAL client and through low level errors I couldn't catch in VFP. Had to move my development environment to the C: drive (which nearly all users have!).

Thanks Tamar

B-)

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

 

[golf212]

Our product seems to run just fine, the only problem so far has been our ".HLP" help file. Our apps are FPW2.6 recompiled in VFP6, with legacy help files. Vista wants to see a CHM, HTML, or XML help file. We get around this problem by using the MS 16 bit help program:

RUN/n winhelp.exe T:\exec\helpfile.hlp

in place of:

SET HELP TO T:\exec\helpfile.hlp

MS is not including the WINHELP32 program is Vista but supposedly they will be making it available for download. The 16 bit WINHELP is included in Vista, go figure!

FWIW, We have found the FPW2.6 Foxpro compiler works and we have built compiled EXE's that run just fine.

Only other kink todate is trying to apply the SP5 for VFP6 development system which fails, some kind of issue with MDAC versions. Haven't spent a lot of time trying to resolve yet as we plan to continue use of XP Pro development platform.

John

 

[GriffMG]

Thanks John,

That's all helpful.

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

 

[southspain]

I have a brand new Vista portable from Sony. Before allowing any installation Vista warns of incompatibilty and then takes you to a website which says there is a problem with c++, nevertheless I went ahead with the installation.

The first thing I tried was opening some form. Opening an existing form says the SCT file is corrupted, whilst a new form cannot be saved and causes a fatal error message. However, running a form works fine.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Southspain,

If possible, could you try to do that with a number of different forms, and also try to open the same forms on an XP system (preferably with the same version of VFP). That would tell you (and us) if the problem was with one specific form or with Vista in general.

Also, which version of VFP are you using? VFP 9.0 seems to be more sensitive to minor corruption in FPT files (which is what a SCT is).

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[DougHennig]

Southspain:

The reason for the error with the SCT file is that when VFP opens a form or class, it writes a new datetime value for the SCT and VCT files (which seems dumb since you haven't made any changes to it, but that's the way it is). If you open a form in a protected folder (such as Program Files), it can't do that so it assumes the SCT or VCT is corrupted. The solution is to move the SCX/SCT or VCX/VCT files to a folder you have permission to write to.

Doug