Q&A and Windows MeŽ - Still Going!
Well, one more time I was bitten by the 'You Must Install This New Operating System' frenzy from Microsoft. Actually, the real reason was that users of Q&A have been calling and E-Mailing since the hour of release with the same old question - "Will Q&A run in Windows MeŽ (Millennium Edition)? How did I proceed? With much trepidation and caution! This because Microsoft had announced that Windows MeŽ no longer supports DOS or DOS programs. So I now had to sacrifice two more computers to the testing labs. A Compaq notebook and Compaq desktop computer. Both previously had Windows 98 SEŽ installed as their operating systems. I used the special upgrade version of Windows MeŽ to upgrade both. So, you ask, what happened?
From the title of this article, obviously I had some degree of success. How much? It depends on your hardware and point of view. Let me start off with the comment that if I had to chose between Windows MeŽ and Windows 2000Ž, Windows 2000Ž is the hands-down winner, in the business arena. Windows MeŽ, as it was designed to be, is an operating system for the novice user, with emphasis on home-networking, internet, and picture-editing. It attempts to isolate the user from the intricacies of computing and, therefore, makes some things very hard to accomplish. But, enough of that.
Bottom Line:
| Version | Laptop | Desktop |
| Q&A Windows Version 4.0 | Runs Fine* | Runs Fine* |
| Q&A DOS 4.0 | Runs Fine** | Runs Fine** |
| Q&A DOS 5.0 | Runs*** | Runs Fine**** |
* Requires 3rd Party partitioning software on drives larger than 2Gb
** On drives larger than 2Gb, requires Partitioning of Drive for Installation -or- files must be copied
on and Lesspace run
*** Requires Lesspace for drives > 2Gb; May find problems with attaining expanded memory on
certain laptops (the one we tested is an example)
**** Requires Lesspace for drives > 2Gb
Windows MeŽ does not have the ability to boot to a DOS prompt, but it can open a DOS Window and run DOS programs within it. It does not use a config.sys unless you have an old driver loaded in your current setup that is not supported by Windows MeŽ. This is important! The config.sys is where you place the device drivers to set up Expanded and High memory. So, how do we get the system to recognize these memory settings that Q&A needs to run successfully? It seems that you don't have to do anything.
As a check, after installing Windows MeŽ, click on 'Start', 'Programs', 'Accessories', 'MS Dos prompt'. In the DOS window that opens, type "mem/c/p" and press enter twice. If you see a line that reports any numbers in Expanded memory, you are fine. Close the DOS window and use Q&A just like you did in Windows 98Ž. Create your Q&A shortcut on the desktop and set its memory properties just like we have written in previous articles.
If that line is missing, you probably have one of the few computers models with a BIOS that does not support Expanded Memory (just like the laptop we tested). This does not seem to be Windows MeŽ related. For Q&A Windows 4.0 or Q&A DOS 4.0 this is not a problem. However, in Q&A DOS 5.0 expanded memory is critical for printing long reports, entering large amounts of data in expanded fields, fonting documents, etc. So, what do we do at his point on these machines?
One thing - Search your system.ini for a line that starts with "EmmExclude.." in the [386Enh] section and "rem" it out by typing a semicolon in front of it. Save the file, reboot your system and you should have Expanded memory.
The testing of network connections and overall speed with Q&A and Windows MeŽ as compared to other versions of Windows has proven to be no faster or slower. This is good. It works just as well as it always has.
So, just like the Energizer Bunny, Q&A keeps on going! Our findings show that, with the same caveats as in prior versions of Win9x, ALL versions of Q&A 4.0/5.0 will run fine in Windows MeŽ!