Our company has a program written in Paradox 3 by a former employee (now deceased). We want to be able to run it on a Windows 98 system, but it won't. We assume our option is to import the data into access, but we're not sure how to do it. If I import the db files into tables in Access, I still don't appear to have the "working" program.

What is our best option??

Thanks in advance for the help.

Most of my old 3.0 and 4.5 apps ran under Win95 and Win98 in a DOS window. However, you should probably consider upgrading to a Windows version of Paradox and re-writing the application. Or, you might be able to duplicate it in Access (but if it's multi-user thing I'd think twice about that).

Thanks for the quick reply. It's not multi-user. The problem is that we don't have any programmers on staff. We've got some estute computer users and systems guys, but no software folks. Can we not import the entire application into Access? Or, can we buy a newer version of Paradox and run the same application?

Unfortunately I don't have a simple solution for you. You cannot import the application to Access, only the data tables. When you do this you will lose any coded relationship between the tables and you will need to re-establish any look-up links or data formatting restrictions. All reports, queries and forms will be gone and must be recreated in Access. If you use an access programmer for this, he may be able to glean some information from the *.sc files in your applications directory.

You might be able to buy an old copy of 4.x (DOS), which would allow the application to run on your Win98 machines. You may have to hunt EBay to get it, but it should be very cheap. Your system guys should be able to set the shortcut up so that it runs full screen. If you have trouble with Paradox for DOS, the best guy to ask is Steve Green (http://www.diamondsg.com/main.htm). He may even have a solution for your version 3.

When Paradox went to a Windows version the programming language and structure changed dramatically, and none (or very, very little) of your Version 3 code is compatible with the 'modern' version of Paradox.

Hope this helps,

Mac

Hi,

I saw your question and I think you should not have a problem getting a paradox for dos app to run under win98, but there are a couple of issues you will have to deal with. My experience relates to using paradox 3.5 and you should do the following:

1) create a batch file to start the app with a command line that specifies the -extk switch at 15000 or lower. It would look something like this:

c:\paradox\paradox.exe -extk -15000 c:\{your directory}\{startup.sc}

What this does is to force paradox to only use 15000 kb of Ram memory for startup. Most of us have computers today with far more memory, and without this line, paradox freezes.

2) you may have a hard disk which is so large that paradox doesn't know what to do with it. There is a utility called lesspace which was distributed on the old paradox compuserve forum years ago which fools the paradox into thinking the hard disk is smaller than it really is. You may have to put a command for loading lesspace in the batch file before the above line that invokes paradox.

3) You should run this batch file which invokes the app in ms-dos mode. If you create an icon on the desktop for the batch file, you can right click on the icon, go into properties, and in the program tab click on the advanced button to check off ms-dos mode.

All these instructions apply to paradox 3.5 . I don't know about paradox 3.0, and I have never tried this. If the above doesn't work for 3.0 , you could try running the same program in 3.5. If you cannot get ahold of 3.5, I can send you the 3.5 runtime which will also run your app.

All this is a lot cheaper than converting the app to access or anything else, and it should work.

Michael