george2002 said:
Hello,
I am trying to restore a friend's computer and I am running into nothing
but headaches! He insists on using a very old accounting program. I have
gotten the program to work under XP but can configure the printer. The
program is called Zebra (however, I doubt anyone remembers it.) I get an
error message about the printer in recognizing the fonts. Does anyone
know where I could find information about getting such an ancient
program to print in XP. Oh it will save the unprinted spreadsheet to a
txt file . . . but the columns come out wrong. I can't convince the guy
to get a newer program . . . any ideas?
Thank you, George
Some older programs just WOUN'T get along with newer operating systems.
In some cases these applications are designed to comunicate directly
with peripherals like modems or printers and by design Windows XP WILL
NOT TOLERATE THAT. To coordinate the allocation of peripheral and other
resources the OS MUST be givin the oportunity to handle ALL the data
transfers between applications and the various hardware resources.
Tolerance of applications bypassing the OS was behind many of the
problems of earlier operating systems.
While Windows XP has a lot of similarities to Windows 9x/ME it IS a
DIFFERENT operating system. There are even more differences between
Windows XP and Windows 3.x/WFWG under DOS.
Solutions:
Run the old program on a computer running an earlier OS. Run Windows XP
on a seperate computer. As an alternate the hard drives could be mounted
in remoavable cartrages than can be swapped, with the computer powered
down, to determine which OS is to be booted.
Set up a computer with multiple OS bootups. This may require the removal
of ALL information from the hard drive and installing the earlier OS
BEFORE installing Windows XP. Some Windows XP instalation CDs produced
by computer manufacturers may be unable to accommidate this procedure.
Unfortunately some late model printers might not be available when
running the earlier OS version. On the other hand ink or toner supplies
might not be available for older printers.
Investigate the feasability of resolving the column misalignment issues
when exporting to a text file. You may be able to use a comma delimited
format that can be imported to a Windows XP compatable spreadsheet
application OR configure the older application to print a fixed width
font like Courier with spaces instead of tabs. Of course the Windows XP
compatable application you import the text file into must be configured
to display and print in a fixed width font as well.
Replace the application with a Windows XP compatable one. Replacing an
old application may be complicated by issues involving data file
forwarding. Consider the fact that by many accounting standards the old
application has probably depreciated to zero financial value. The
purchase price of the new application might provide new oportunities for
a depreciation expense.
