For many years I have used a program called Expert Personal Roots (EPR) to develop my family tree. The software was originally used with Windows 3.1. Over the years, I have upgraded to Windows 95, Windows 98, and then Windows XP and each time I saved and copied the EPR folder to the new version of Windows. The program worked perfectly in Windows 95 and 98, however after upgrading to Windows XP whenever I attempt to run EPR a message appears: ‘Divide by zero or overflow error’ and the program will not run. In response to this problem, I installed Virtual PC 2004 so I could run other operating systems within the Windows XP ‘host’. The guest operating systems installed are Windows 3.1/DOS 6.22, Windows 95, and Windows 98 SE. I have copied all the EPR files onto the Windows 95 and Windows 98 SE guest operating systems, and it works fine on each of them. However, when I copy the files to Windows 3.1 (in exactly the same way) the same ‘divide by zero’ error message appears, as in Windows XP, and EPR will not load. Why doesn’t EPR work on Windows 3.1, even though the program was originally designed for this system? (more…)

Frequently Windows Me will not shutdown correctly. A blinking cursor appears in the top left hand corner of the screen and nothing else happens. To properly shutdown the computer I must switch the power off at the power outlet. As a consequence of this improper shutdown, the next time the computer is started it goes through the ScanDisk process. Interestingly, the problem only occurs after using the internet (e.g. Internet Explorer or Outlook Express) and does not occur if not using the computer for the internet purposes, such as for word processing using Microsoft Word. (more…)

When starting my Windows 98 computer, a message appears saying: ‘Enter your network password for Microsoft networking’. I click the ‘Cancel’ button and the computer finishes loading. Is there a way to stop this box from coming up? (more…)

Since moving from dial-up to broadband, whenever the computer is started the following message appears: ‘Cannot find a device file that may be needed to run Windows or a Windows application. The Windows registry or SYSTEM.INI file refers to this device but the device file no longer exists: vredir.vxd’. This message appears again with the file dfs.vxd. Once the message is closed the desktop appears and there are no further problems. The computer is running Windows 98. (more…)

A past tip of the week explained how to hide inactive system tray icons in Windows XP. Is there any way to hide a number of icons in the Windows 98 SE system tray? I never use most of the icons, so they are just taking up space. (more…)