[Papyrus-L] Sudden Strange Behavior

[John Kiernan]

Dear John Fennick,
You were busy Papyrusing early on Christmas day.  The program's author should send you a medal!
 
I've used Papyrus for ?15 years, and survived the sad transitions from DOS to Winders 3.?, 9?.*, 2000 (which was good!), XP (a disappointment) and now Vista (an abomination).  Papyrus won't run under Vista. Let us keep our XP systems alive as long as we can.
 
I can run Papyrus with no difficulty with Windows XP, Service Pack 3, on 2 different computers (one with an LCD screen and one with an older CRT colour monitor). The program is installed in C:\REFS\PAPYRUS, and has a shortcut icon on the Windows desktop. Right-clicking the icon brings up a menu with "Properties" as the last item. Left-clicking "Properties" brings up all sorts of options. Under "Screen" it is essential to mark "Full-screen", NOT "Window". If you try to run Papyrus in a window smaller than the whole screen, the program freezes whenever it's necessary to make any kind of selection from a list. 
 
If you run Papyrus from the pathetic "command prompt" that comes with Windows versions 95 and higher, or from an excellent freeware DOS emulator such as 4NT or Take Command, you must go full-screen (Alt+Enter) BEFORE starting Papyrus. Pressing Alt+Enter with Papyrus already running in a little window does not solve the problem with selecting from lists. If Papyrus freezes, you can lose the changes and additions made in that session. 
 
Hope this helps, and best Christmas wishes,
 
John Kiernan
Port Stanley, Ontario (Home)
UWO, London, Canada (Work)
= === = = = == = 
----- Original Message -----
From: John Fennick <jhf2 at bellsouth.net>
Date: Thursday, December 25, 2008 0:04
Subject: [Papyrus-L] Sudden Strange Behavior
To: papyrus-l at ResearchSoftwareDesign.com


> Running XP, recently with SP 3.

> 

> When I open Papyrus often a solid black screen appears. Task 

> manager 

> does allow stopping PAP. ON second try, it opens, "New Entry" 

> seems 

> to work. But LIST/GROUP takes at least two tries to come up with 

> the 

> "Is this the File?". "YES" then brings up "Format OK?", "YES" 

> then 

> brings up the Destination list on Device. The system is usually 

> frozen at this point but sometimes it allows a selection of a 

> device, 

> then freezes. On rare occasion, freezing occurs during misc. 

> other 

> command sequences.

> I have tried:

>          reinstalling PAP

>          run anti-virus 

> on all files

>          backed-up and 

> restored the BIB files

>          downloaded and 

> reinstalled a fresh copy of PAP

>          Pap resides on 

> another partition so I also tried loading it into "C".

>          Most luck was 

> recovering a complete OS partition from the 

> oldest stored image, which worked fine until: thinking all was 

> well, 

> I made a new image (two on separate disks). Unhappily, even 

> though I 

> deleted all intermediate dated images first, the new images 

> pushed 

> the oldest one to limbo. I do think that oldest image was prior 

> to SP 

> 3 for XP installation, but not sure.

> 

> I uninstalled all (but SP 3) windows "Updates" to the date of 

> that 

> lost image - no help.

> I am reluctant to uninstall SP 3 because that installation was 

> real pain.

> 

> Any thoughts on what else I might try?

> 

> thanks

> 

> 

> John Fennick

> jhf2 at bellsouth.net

> alt: j.fennick at ieee.org

> Tel: 770 949-9132

> 7045 Fletcher Drive

> Winston, GA 30187

> USA 

> 

> _______________________________________________

> Papyrus-L mailing list

> Papyrus-L at ResearchSoftwareDesign.com

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