From: Mike_Quigley@mindlink.bc.ca (Mike Quigley)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: The Calm (?) After the Storm
Date: 9 Apr 92 16:16:53 GMT
Article-I.D.: mindlink.11340
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada


After raving over my problems with Windows 3.1 the other day, I've now
calmed down. I actually got 3.1 to run OK after installing it about 10
times. (I finally got so fed up with feeding floppies into my 386-33 that
I installed them all in a separate directory called SETUP, which made the
installation last a couple of minutes instead of 10 or 15). My problem
with Telix not appearing correctly full screen when run in a window was
caused by the wrong video driver (3.1 had installed an SVGA one, not the
VGA one). Thanks to those who offered sympathy and advice on this matter.
I'm still not confident in 3.1's ability to keep things stable when
running Telix in the background and some hairy disk accesses (unzipping,
decompressing, uudecoding) in the foreground, but it's starting to look
better.

Further screwups were caused by PC Tools 7.1's installation program
which, according to one correspondent, writes a new keyboard driver to
the SYSTEM.INI file, and prevents 3.1 from booting properly. (Mine would
stop, give a message that it couldn't find some file to run in the 386
mode, then push any key and run Setup again. I pushed the key, and then
it DID run in the 386 mode!)

I also had problems with PC Tools virus detector VDefend, which the Setup
from DOS explicitly tells you to remove. I did that, and it installed OK,
but when I put the VDefend line back in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, when I put
it as the last item in the file, 3.1 would start up when booted from the
DOS prompt, go for about 5 seconds and then just hang. When I put the
VDefend line at the beginning of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, everything worked
OK.

Another problem arose with Central Point Launcher, which is a glorified
version of the box in the upper left hand corner which allows you to go
to the Task List. Although this had existed in the WIN.INI file of my
version of 3.0 for months, the new one caused 3.1 to bomb and lose the
mouse pointer after it started up with the message "WNLAUNCH caused a
General Protection Fault in module WNLAUNCH.EXE at 0001:32C7." (This is a
new fancy way of saying "UAE", I suppose, or "something is seriously
f*cked up".) In checking my AUTOEXEC.BAT file again, I noticed I'd
scrubbed a line in my attempt to make it as bare-bones as possible:

SET PCTOOLS=C:\PCTOOLS\DATA

After restoring this line, WNLAUNCH worked fine. (Since that time I've
gotten this General Protection Fault blurb with another application
called Diskit which was giving me tons of UAEs in 3.0.)

I'd really like to second the recent message which recommended installing
3.1 in a completely new directory (or moving everything from 3.0 or
whatever into another directory and then 3.1 into the Windows directory)
rather than just installing over the old version. Kill off some over your
most precious programs to make the necessary disk space. Believe it --
it's worth it. I didn't, and wasted many hours in frustration.
--
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If you're going to reply in E-mail, please don't quote my whole message back to me -- it costs me money!!! (so does this extra line)
Mike Quigley, Vancouver, B.C., Canada             Mike_Quigley@mindlink.bc.ca
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms