Re: Capture Server Error
Thanks for your thoughts but I do tend to disagree.
Why?
First the trivial point, my system information gives me:
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 1 Build 2600
Also, when it starts XP tells me, quite rightly, it is based on NT.
Second, the historical one:
Acrobat 4.05c runs under Win 95, 98 and NT4
That suggests to me that it grew from a Win 95 code base through to NT4. This impression is also reinforced by the fact that capserve.exe, the guilty application, does not log its errors in the NT event system.
Third, when Win2K (NT5) came out what happened?
some support updates for Acrobat 4.05 appeared. See
"To install Update 2:
1. If you use Windows NT or Windows 2000, log in as Administrator.
2. Double-click the Acrobat 4.0.5 Update 2 file.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions."
This shows, by implication, that all was supposed to be well for Win2K, i.e. NT5
As far as I am aware it was OK with Win2K.
But a minor upgrade of OS, from 5.0 to 5.1 (Win2k to WinXP) does not work. This upgrade (5 to 5.1) is marketed by Microsoft as principally one of User Friendliness. The first upgrade (98 to Win2k aka NT5) was marketed as Sysadmin Friendliness.
Lastly, the error itself.
I get a popup window with the title: "DDE Server Window: Capserve.exe - Application Error" and contents:
"The instruction at 0x77f580db referenced memory at 0x00000000 the memory could not be written"
There could be two situations here:
1 it was doing that in all the earlier versions but those OS's were simply not trapping the error i.e. they were ignoring the illegal "write"
2 capserve is not coping gracefully with some changes in system dll's, unlike applications written following good MS practises, which do.
Regarding your other points, I have several applications running here that date from Win3.1 or Win 95. They all work fine - in terms of major functionality at least and certainly do not crash. Cooledit 96, first installed on Windows for Work Groups 3.1, I think, in 96, Inspiration 4.0, 1994, Personal Librarian for Windows 4.15, May 1995. As it happens the last two are also cross platform apps (Windows and Mac) and certainly, in the case of Personal Librarian written using a common code base with a cross platform toolkit (XVT or somesuch).
To my mind, leaving customers in the lurch like this is bad business. I have Compaq hardware that I fetched software updates for the BIOS and everything else over the last four years to see it from Win95, that it started with, through to WinXP now. Over the same timespan my wife's Sony VAIO has disappeared off the face of the earth as far as Sony is concerned - it started on Win2K and nothing is available for it to upgrade. Thus no matter how flashy the kit - guess which manufacturer I shall stick with and recommend?
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Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 02:40:34 -0700