Doug White
2006-02-20 21:55:17 UTC
I have a heavy investment in DOS based programs for microwave circuit
design that I have used for many years. I have managed to keep them
going through numerous OS changes, and they worked well in both Windows
NT and W2K. It appears that Microsoft has broken a feature I rely on
when they came out with XP.
The problem is that Alt-Enter should toggle between full screen &
"windowed" mode when a program is running in the DOS emulator. In NT &
W2K, this worked independent of whether the program was displaying text
or graphics. The graphics screen would be "frozen" when windowed, but
you could use Alt-Print Screen to copy the graphics to the clipboard,
which allowed the resulting image to be pasted into Word, PowerPoint etc.
for documentation & reports. I have verified that this problem occurs on
a variety of XP machines, with very different grqphics systems, so I
don't believe it is the hardware. I have also tried all of the various
"compatibility" modes. I have also investigated a number of 3rd party
screen capture utilities. None of them work with DOS graphics UNLESS you
can use Alt-Enter to window the program. Although I believe there was
something there a while back, MS's "knowledge base" seems to have
developed Alzheimer's, because there is no mention of this issue that I
could find. A thorough scan of old Usenet postings shows that A) I am
not alone, and B) nobody has a fix.
Because the programs work OK in XP, there is no point in going to a dual
boot system. The feature I am missing is unique to running DOS (or a
DOS emulator) in a windows environment. Short of downgrading to W2K
(which the IT people at work won't likely let me do), I appear to be
stuck.
My questions are:
1) Has anyone else managed to get this to work in XP? If you are brave,
I can send you a small program that will display a DOS graphics file to
test with.
2) Does anyone have any suggestions on possible ways to convince XP to
behave properly in this regard? It is still possible there is some
setting someplace would allow this to work, but I sure can't find it.
3) Are there 3rd party DOS emulators that would possibly work?
4) Is there any way to get Microsoft's attention about this issue? All
of my machines have OEM XP, which means Microsoft won't talk to me, and
Dell & IBM support just blame it on Micosoft & say there is nothing they
can do. I'd even be willing to pay $35 of my own money to place a
support call if I thought it would do any good. I work in the US
defense industry, and there is a war on. I'm trying to save lives, and I
find it REALLY annoying that Microsoft has the resources to code up
talking paperclips but won't fix things that prevent people from getting
real work done.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Doug White
design that I have used for many years. I have managed to keep them
going through numerous OS changes, and they worked well in both Windows
NT and W2K. It appears that Microsoft has broken a feature I rely on
when they came out with XP.
The problem is that Alt-Enter should toggle between full screen &
"windowed" mode when a program is running in the DOS emulator. In NT &
W2K, this worked independent of whether the program was displaying text
or graphics. The graphics screen would be "frozen" when windowed, but
you could use Alt-Print Screen to copy the graphics to the clipboard,
which allowed the resulting image to be pasted into Word, PowerPoint etc.
for documentation & reports. I have verified that this problem occurs on
a variety of XP machines, with very different grqphics systems, so I
don't believe it is the hardware. I have also tried all of the various
"compatibility" modes. I have also investigated a number of 3rd party
screen capture utilities. None of them work with DOS graphics UNLESS you
can use Alt-Enter to window the program. Although I believe there was
something there a while back, MS's "knowledge base" seems to have
developed Alzheimer's, because there is no mention of this issue that I
could find. A thorough scan of old Usenet postings shows that A) I am
not alone, and B) nobody has a fix.
Because the programs work OK in XP, there is no point in going to a dual
boot system. The feature I am missing is unique to running DOS (or a
DOS emulator) in a windows environment. Short of downgrading to W2K
(which the IT people at work won't likely let me do), I appear to be
stuck.
My questions are:
1) Has anyone else managed to get this to work in XP? If you are brave,
I can send you a small program that will display a DOS graphics file to
test with.
2) Does anyone have any suggestions on possible ways to convince XP to
behave properly in this regard? It is still possible there is some
setting someplace would allow this to work, but I sure can't find it.
3) Are there 3rd party DOS emulators that would possibly work?
4) Is there any way to get Microsoft's attention about this issue? All
of my machines have OEM XP, which means Microsoft won't talk to me, and
Dell & IBM support just blame it on Micosoft & say there is nothing they
can do. I'd even be willing to pay $35 of my own money to place a
support call if I thought it would do any good. I work in the US
defense industry, and there is a war on. I'm trying to save lives, and I
find it REALLY annoying that Microsoft has the resources to code up
talking paperclips but won't fix things that prevent people from getting
real work done.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Doug White