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Help with getting Geotools Mitsubishi Laser program running on Win98

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First post, by kgeetings

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I have an old laser I recently bought and hope to get up and running. The seller included the install discs for this program, and I've got an old computer set up and running Windows 98 as that is what I was told the program was working on before. Unfortunately, the software does not seem to be installing correctly. I'm unsure on what I can/should post here, but I can upload any of the files if requested.

I have a total of 4 discs. Disc 1 is the first install disc, and then disc 2 is what I swap out halfway through the install, and this process seems to work correctly, as the program says it's installed successfully. Disc 3 and 4 are just the system files and material files, but nothing that I have drag and dropped from those two has made any changes.

The problem when I attempt begins when I try to start the program, I get the following error "Can't load Custom Control DLL: 'C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MHGTXT.VBX'". The file is located in that directory, so it's not a problem of it being missing. I figured it may be corrupted, so I was able to find an archive of something that includes the MHGTXT.VBX file (https://archive.org/details/3X3_12) and dragged that vbx file into the SYSTEM folder, and now I'm getting a new DLL error "Can't load Custom Control DLL: 'C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MHCM200.VBX'". I'm not entirely sure if using that new vbx file actually helps any, as they could just happen to have the same naming scheme? But at least it now moves on to the next DLL file, which makes me think that the installer may not be installing correctly. Or that the disc files are corrupted somehow.

The install discs have files in them that are called MHGTXT.VB_ which I assume is what the installer is renaming and moving the the system folder, but they appear to be smaller in size that what gets put in the system folder, so the installer must be doing something in between this process that I'm not aware of.

Let me know if you need/want the files, I can upload them to google drive or to here, and send them either publicly or privately depending on which is best.

Last edited by kgeetings on 2024-04-25, 15:55. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 3, by kgeetings

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I was also able to setup a VirtualBox instance of Windows 98 and created two .iso files of each install disc, and am now getting the same errors as the actual Windows 98 machine, so it doesn't seem to be an issue of the device. I'll link the google drive folder here, but if it should be taken down, just let me know. If someone wants to try installing it, the easiest way through VirtualBox is by loading the first install disc .iso file in as an optical disc, and then when the program requests disc 2, doing the same for that one.

Reply 2 of 3, by elszgensa

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I just ran an image search to see what we're even talking about and wow, did you just casually buy a truck sized piece of industrial equipment?

Anyways, the software you have is written in Visual Basic 3 so you could try manually installing the appropriate runtime package. Maybe the setup expects those to already be in place (because who doesn't have those installed, this is the 90s after all?). edit: Scratch that. I tried with a full install of the entire VB3 IDE. Didn't help.

What fails to load are "VBTools" components by MicroHelp, who I've never heard of but a quick search suggested may have had some issues with getting to 32 bits, at least for some of them, so it's probably not the best/most compatible code. Your binaries are all 16 bit so you could try it in Win3.x. edit: No dice, I'm seeing the same error message in Win3.11.

Yet another edit - Alright, I got it to run. I noticed my MHRUN400.DLL, which those VBXes rely on, was full of all zeroes - the source file used by the installer is broken (only zeroes in there, too), and there seems to be no error checking for this... Replaced it with the one from your "system files" folder/disc and it started right up.

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