 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Mac Forum / Applications / Virtual PC / October 2005Usable applications
In general, how common is it for a Windows application not to work under Virtual PC? I've used an older version of a baseball stats program for a number of years - first on Soft Windows and then for the past few years on various versions of VPC (now up to vers 6). This app has worked nicely both under Win 98, 2000, and XP. Seeing that they had a much newer version available with many more features, I downloaded a demo and installed it, but was unable to get to run. The minute you tell the developer that your trying to run it under VPC, all support ceases - they just don't want to deal with it. Back to my initial question - is this common and am I just out of luck? > In general, how common is it for a Windows application not to work > under Virtual PC? I've used an older version of a baseball stats [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > ceases - they just don't want to deal with it. Back to my initial > question - is this common and am I just out of luck? Unless an application has special graphics requirements or deals with fancy hardware, I would expect it to work under VPC. I can't imagine why a statistics program wouldn't work. What errors do you get?  SignatureBarry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA >> In general, how common is it for a Windows application not to work >> under Virtual PC? I've used an older version of a baseball stats [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >fancy hardware, I would expect it to work under VPC. I can't imagine >why a statistics program wouldn't work. What errors do you get? Or, if the program has self-modifying code, which usually messes things up under VPC. You can get around this by running in compatibility mode, which you can enable under scripts. But compatibility mode comes at a performance hit. SignatureCheers, Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP http://www.essjae.com/vpc/vpc.htm "This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. You assume all risk for your use. I am not am employee of Microsoft." The actual program I'm trying to run is AllPro Software's StatTrak for Baseball/Softball 10.0. Version 3.1 that I've been using for some years runs fine, so I guess over the years the programmers have done someting to the app that now is causing me fits. At times I get a run-time error 339 which says compenent xwpdlx20.ocx is not correctly registered amd other times it just says the program has performed an illegal operation and will be shutdown. AllPro tried at first to help me out, but nothing seemed to help. Then they asked me if I was using on a Mac, which I am - end of discussion. Their answer was"It contains a 3rd party control that is incompatible with that environment." Explain to me more about the compatibility mode if you, Please Steve. How do I access it and just what does it do? That sounds like a self-mod code issue, so perhaps what they added was anti-piracy protection (the most common use of self-mod code). In the VPC preferences, there is an option to enable the script menu. Do so. You should now see a new menu on the right side of the mac menu bar. Go to the VPC troubleshooting scripts and you'll see one named "Toggle Compatibility Mode". You can enable and disable this one at will. Try that and see what it does. Thanks for the compatibility mode script info. I've tried it and it seems now to let the programs work. Excellent. I should give you a little additional info. Compat mode can be toggled at any time, and when enabled, the VM will run slower. Keeping that in mind, you might want to only enable it when you're running this program, and then disable it when you're finished. You might also consider contacting the company in question and let them know that the problem was that they're making use of self-modifying code, and what the workaround is... just in case another VPC user calls and they actually care to help. Unseelie: Thanks for the info. I've done as you suggest and contacted the company. They're happy that the Compatibility Mode enables their programs to work, but do not have a workaround at this time. So I'll just toggle it off and on as needed. I wouldn't expect them to have a workaround... as the problem is likely some sort of anti-piracy measure, and likely something they purchased rather than write themselves. > In general, how common is it for a Windows application not to work > under Virtual PC? I've used an older version of a baseball stats [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > ceases - they just don't want to deal with it. Back to my initial > question - is this common and am I just out of luck? Just don't tell them you're using VirtualPC. "I'm using Windows XP / 2000". :o) For almost all software purposes VirtualPC *is* a real PC. The exceptions are things that require a 3D graphics card or other specialised hardware ... or the programmer has done something naughty to get a speed boost (eg. bypassing the OS to directly access something). The only real things that can be VirtualPC / Mac specific are when you're trying to access hardware, eg. the Mac's printer, Internet connection, etc. Helpful Harry Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o) |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.