>>Nope, but I'd venture a guess that the machine either has never had NT SP3 or later applied, or has inconsistent components in place - most likely someone applied an NT Service Pack, later had to go back and load stuff from the initial distribution disk and failed to reapply the NT Service Pack.
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>>I'd recommend reapplying the latest NT Service Pack previously applied to the system if its at SP3 or later (at least SP3; SP5 is available now for download from MS's web site, and SP6 should be out in the not too distant future.) The internal implementation of MESSAGEBOX() for VFP calls a basic Win32 service, so there's an indication that things other than VFP may be affected.
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>>I'd also make certain that you have the latest Setup Wizard patches for VFP5, which can be downloaded from msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro/downloads; this would involve installing the update to VFP5's Setup Wizard and rebuilding the distribution disks. if you are not now working under VFP 5.0a ( VERSION(1) should report
Visual FoxPro 05.00.00.0415 for Windows) you need at least thge Setup Wizard updates, and would be far better off updating both your development system and the runtime distribution files to the files contained in VFP 5.0a
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>>If you have not applied the latest DevStudio SP, which would update VFP5 to VFP5.0a, you can download the DevStudio Service Pack from the same site. You're looking for SP3 for DevStudio (VS97), not the VS6 SP3 patch which updates VFP6.
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>I have a new NTWS (SP4) install (the last one had big problems), and so far I've run vfp5.0a, and vfp6 (no SPs yet) EXEs on it, and there are no such problems. I also had vfp6 SP3 on it previously, and no problems. So you could be right about the vfp5 SP.
>
In this case, I'd be more concerned with NT Service Packs; for example, you might get an NT 4.0 WS with SP5 installed but no networking stuff in place; when the networking client stuff gets installed, it calls for the distribution disk and copies down the files, and then you
have to reapply SP5, since some new stuff that would've been updated by SP5 may have crept in during the process of adding the network stuff. Recovery of NT systems that require you to go back to the original disks usually require reapplication of all previously installed NT SPs and hotfixes, too, since, especially in repair mode, files can and will be copied from the original disk, and later versions are not protected, since the later version might be the root of the problem, or might be corrupted.
>My first NTWS install had some funny problems, though, so that still could be a problem...I was getting vfp Invalid Seek Offsets a lot, plus some unrelated network errors. The complete NTWS reinstall seems to have solved everything (though I had to reinstall everything else, too)...
Complete reinstalls are a PITA, but seem to cure a whole lot of problems, including squirrelly DLLs and drivers that seem to hang on even after being uninstalled...and it cleans up the registry ayt the same time.
