Weeeird. I thought Vlad removed Tip of the Day in update2, but apparently not until 2.1.0, whose development has become stagnant (my fault? maybe, who knows). In any case, that's oddly reminiscent of the Win9x version of VDMSound.

(Oh, and I'm still working on getting DOSBox to work with MZX, so all hope is not yet lost even if VDMSound does this 😉)

Yeah. I'm already running update 2. I think I found a workaround.

This is a totally separate and OT problem, but have you guys had any reported issues of EMS not working *at all* (not just in conjunction with VDMS, but generally) on certain hardware with Windows XP?

You see, I've got a few machines here and MZX works fine on all of them -- Windows 2000 SP3, Windows XP SP 1, now Windows Server 2003.. but I've got a Dell Latitude (C800) which dual boots Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP 1 and the latter refuses to allocate EMS for any virtualised process.

It's baffling and totally unaffected by the EMS setting in the program PIF. I've also had a hard time trying to track this sort of thing down, but I know it happens to a load of people with a similar setup.

I maintain a "how to" for getting MZX to work on NT variants at http://devzero.co.uk/mzxnt.html . For the most part, everybody seems to have no problems with this, but the EMS issue is really annoying and I seriously doubt we'll get anything out of Microsoft.

It seems to be restricted (fortunately) to XP Home & Professional, but I'm not certain about that detail.

Cheers,
ajs.

It only happens on that machine in XP and not in Windows 2000? That is weird. We've always been assuming that it has been TSRs in the memory that prevents EMM386 from loading in the virtualized conventional memory. I suppose it's entirely possible that XP loads just that much more to make it impossible to load EMM386, but, weird.

Yep. I always thought it was driver related, actually. That is, a certain driver is conflicting with Windows XP's EMS subsystem.

Whatever the cause, the dualbooting laptop would seem to suggest that it is indeed restricted to Windows XP. I've just installed Windows 2003 on the laptop, tri booting.

/me checks.

OK, and Windows 2003 on the same hardware also gives me EMS. I can't really track it down to anything smaller.

Cheers,
ajs.

Originally posted by ajs Yep. I always thought it was driver related, actually. That is, a certain driver is conflicting with Windows XP's EMS subsystem.

I've never seen that on mine. Did you ever try anything that needed EMS before you applied SP1?

I am reminded of the thread that NStriker wrote (searching the forum...)

But this isa very different problem!!

Uhh, read my posts through again and you will appreciate that it is not EVERY installation of XP that has this problem..

To answer your question, the service pack has absolutely nothing to do with it. A completely virgin installation of XP on *certain hardware configurations* causes EMS to not work. Upgrading to SP1 makes no difference.

For example, my workstation works fine with every version of windows under the sun, and I get EMS irrespective of what drivers I have installed and what software and updates are applied.

That's the reason why I thought it could be certain drivers: some computers are totally unaffected (most?).

Cheers,
ajs.

NStriker's EMS thread:
showthread.php?threadid=162

Certain hardware configurations, eh?

But it IS weird that EMS works in Win2000 and Win2003. And not in XP.

Try one of the Microsoft USENET groups, maybe they haven't heard of this. But I recommend that M$ be informed somehow.

originally posted by ajs:

However, I recently upgraded my Windows 2000 installation to Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and VDMSound no longer works perfec […]
Show full quote

However, I recently upgraded my Windows 2000 installation to Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and VDMSound no longer works perfectly. In fact, I originally believed that it was completely broken, but discovered that if I stopped VDMS from loading the game in "fullscreen" mode, I got a regular MFC error message which must have been obscured by fullscreen and thus caused more problems.

The problem seems trivial enough to fix, and it doesn't at all affect the execution of the DOS app once dismissed. It does, however, prevent me (at the moment) from launching DOS games in fullscreen, which is an inconvenience.

Yeah, if you try to go Full-Screen with the LaunchPad "Enable Basic VESA support" compatibility checkbox marked active, the the damned "Tip of the Day" steals the focus, or the lack thereof does exactly what you reported... At least in the LaunchPad Beta v1.0.0.7 version.

This is what I did to fix the problem:

Use Notepad to create the "HKCU_Software_Freeware_VDMSound_Fix.reg" file as listed below:

REGEDIT4 […]
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REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Freeware\VDMSound]
"NextTip"=dword:00000000
"TipsFile"="C:\Program Files\VDMSound\VDMSound.tips"
"ShowTips"=dword:00000000

Save the file, and then merge it into the Registry for each User ID that needs VDMSound and Launchpad to work the way you want it to... Works for me, but your mileage may vary...

dvwjr

Thanks for the info. It was actually just the "TipsFile" key that was missing.

I don't use launchpad, but this fixes it.

Cheers,
ajs.

Well, in any case, Tip of the Day is gone in 2.1.0, which should be released RSN.