VFP error message poping out

[svey]

Good day,

I am using everyday a VFP app file. I keep getting an error message popup saying : Cannot quit Visal Foxpro. I can click ok and that closes the box and the app still runs until the same error message pops up again.

I would like to resolve or at least hide the error message.

How/where do I need to look?

Tx

svey

 

[Chris Miller]

OKay, I can also repot that DisplayFusion works with VFP as far as I an tell without actually having a second display plugged in.

The IDE does not fail, no matter if DisplayFusion already runs or I end it and restart it, it can handle the titlebar of FoxPro windows without problems, also when I put Foxpro in the read events state that can be used to reprodicibly cause the "Cannot Quit..." message.

Chriss

 

[svey]

Chriss,

You said: "I can (still) also test this on my PC and see if it triggers this state.", how?

 

[Chris Miller]

By installing and using DisplayFusion, of course, as I already did.

I don't have your specific EXE but, of course, VFP.

There's one more thing I see in the video, a red mouse pointer, is that just a Windows setting or some specificc mouse driver?

Chriss

 

[svey]

The mouse pointer is my windows setting. As for testing, we are 2 data person here and my coworker is experiencing the same popup without having DisplayFusion or a specific mouse driver. He is using a wired usb mouse.

 

[Chris Miller]

Okay, good. The only thing notable is that the "Data Work" title bar does not have that DisplayFusion icon, so indeed DisplayFusion seems to not be able to hoook into that window. As you already tried turning that off, it's still just a red herring, likely.

Chriss

 

[Chris Miller]

What you can also still do is look for the name of the EXE in logs like the Windows Event log by typing

eventvwr.msc

into the taskbar search, Cortana, the "run" dialog or a Windows "DOS" shell or Powershell window.
Then create a custom view with the EXE name as keyword

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-custom-views-in-windows-10s-event-viewer/

Chriss

 

[svey]

Good evening,

I have disable Bitdefender Total Security from my box and tried VFP datawork. I get the same popup. I have included the app file.

Yves

 

[Chris Miller]

EXE file would be more appropriate.

Anyway, in reverse here is a sample foxpro application that includes all necessary files to run the EXE after unzipping.
So to check whether your computer/environment is VFP "hostile", you could run that.

Chriss

 

[Chris Miller]

Your app doesn't work standalone, first thing coming up is an open file dialog looking for a dbf that's missing. I'd say this kind of analysis would only work if you're willing to share all, app, exe, data.

Chriss

 

[svey]

I have put the exe file.

We use that app to process tables in different way. If a *.dbf is already open, you will not be prompted to open another one.

 

[svey]

The exe file

 

[svey]

And we launch the datawork app from VFP

do proper directory\datawork

Yves

 

[Chris Miller]

Ah, so it's a tool processing any DBF? I thought it misses its database.
I can confirm it quits from inside, at least it tries to quit. Repeatedly.

And if you open up the APP in a text editor you can see partial source code, which is not in there because that's what is executed, it's "debug info". The actually exeuted code is side by side binary code, which would need a change. But editing the source code part doesn't help and editing the binary code is quite hopeless.

Examininng the EXE I see it's demanding VisualFoxProRuntime.9, so it's VFP9. Sander Oppenheim is the programmer and the specified product name is DataFix.

There's one thing I would try: Put back the computer time, say 2 years. It could be a meachanism of quitting when a license is too old.

Chriss

 

[svey]

Tx Chriss,

Sander is indeed the programmer that past away.

I will take your suggestion to IT see if an "older" machine can be setup to test if the issue still occurs.

Yves

 

[Chris Miller]

older" in the sense of system date. Yes, I know since time servers are usually used to keep a system time correct, putting it back 2 years will be corrected, eventually. But you can also turn that synchronization off, if it matters.

All in all, there are decompilers, unfoxall and refox. Alone from the knowledge the app has debug info, I think both of these tools would succeed. You can lose some of the aspects and have some work to fix some missing puzzle peaces. If you only need some feature of the whole functionality, it's also possible to replace the tool.

On the subject of technical table defects there are several tools, from roughly looking I see the tool offers data corrections, too, very specific ones besides technical ones, like Canadian address corrections.

Chriss

 

[Chris Miller]

I also think I got to the bottom of it searching for "quit" within the source code you can see in the app file. Also in one case "On Error Quit", bad idea the way this is programmed so that quit at certain times only causes the "cannot quit" message and does not quit.

Chriss

 

[svey]

Good day,

As you probably already know Chriss, putting the computer back 2 years stops the popup when I run the app.

I have downloaded the refox but I am unable to install it, even after disabling my antivirus.

I am hunting for unfoxall.

Yves

 

[Chris Miller]

Today it's hard to get any 3rd party add-on for VFP if you don't already have them. Even in regard to the official MS updates like SP2 and the hotfixes, ODBC driver and more. It's discontinued. If you don't have doenloaded Sedna and other things you got directly after installing VFP9 as it was still newer, VFPX has you covered from at least the most impoortant things like the latest HotFix, SP2 and some ore things:

https://github.com/VFPX/VFP9SP2Hotfix3.

If VERSION() doesn't show the last bit of the version number as 7423, consider updating with the help of the downloads by following the readme there.

Regarding ReFox I currently find:

http://refox.net/rxii-inst-en.html

UnFoxAll is all over the internet, also look into YT videos about it. It's a vfp6 product, so might not be able to decommpile all of your VFP9 tool, though some things here are actually "upward compatible", i.e. decompilation of vfp9 functions could be possible even though the decompiler itself is VFP6, especially since debug info source code is included in the app file.

Chriss

 

[Mike Lewis]

And let me just repeat what I said earlier about ReFox: Even if you succeed in recovering the source code, you will probably still need the services of a programmer to amend the code and to re-build the application.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[svey]

Thanks Chriss, I will try those suggestions.

I agree with you Mike, our dept will need to decide if we move to a different software or if we get the help fixing the VFP.

Tx

Yves