TeleMagic on Windows 7

by | Sep 10, 2010 | Windows 7 | 0 comments

Installing TeleMagic on Vista and Windows 7

Let’s make sure we all understand something here.  Windows Vista/7/8 is not Windows XP.  Each user runs in their own virtual space where in XP every user ran in a common space.  So with Windows V/7/8 when you say “Run as Administrator” it literally creates a new namespace and environment for the user Administrator and does NOT share any common environmental space (mapped drives, printers, etc…) with the local user already logged in.

This is why the first step in any Workstation setup is to log in as Administrator.  Not a user with Administrator rights, not a user who has Power User rights, but the actual Administrator.  If it’s a domain, then log in as <domain>/Administrator as the username.  If it’s a workgroup machine, then enable Administrator then log in as Administrator.

  • In order to get Win 7 to run TM I had to use XP compatibility mode. Run it as Administrator. Mark all .EXE files as compatibility.
  • I am able to run TM5 on Windows 7 without any compatibility mode settings.  It is easier on a domain network than a workgroup network though.
  • I have TM running locally on Windows 7 in compatibility mode.  However, I can’t get it to run across the network.  It’s a little peer to peer with an XP machine as the server.  When I go across the network and set compatibility mode then try testing, I get a generic “TeleMagic has a problem and is shutting down” error.
  • The only way to get TM 3.5 to work with Windows 7 is with the compatibility checkbox.
  • I just got done trying to make it work on 2 Windows 7 machines — one set up as a workstation and one as a workstation/server.  Not an ideal situation, but it has worked for them under Win2K and XP. After creating the fake printer and setting it to run as administrator, TM works fine on the host machine with TM in a shared drive.
    I installed a node to the C: drive and it still ran fine.  I thought I was 3/4 done. The workstation however would not run TM.  When starting it from the mapped share, run as administrator, it comes up with the ‘System ID not defined . . .’ Starting a command prompt: type t:\tm5\programs\tm.ini from a local prompt types the ini file fine. Now the weird part, if I let Win7 diagnose the problem, TM starts and runs fine.  The diagnostic wizard then comes back and says TM is an incompatible program!  Being a lover of a good joke, I thought that I would install the node as long as it was running.  I did, it did, and it attempted to restart from the node — system ID not defined etc etc.  That’s all I could get it to do when running from the node install, even with running the fixit wizard.  It’s like it won’t see the external mappings (or mappings to non-local drives) from within the program. Just to be sure, I shared a drive on the then workstation machine, copied TM5 over and reversed the roles.  Same symptoms, other machine all around. I’ll try it with TM resident on a real server OS tomorrow after I get a Win7 workstation set up at the office to see if it is just a peer to peer killing design bug.  I couldn’t find (or Google or Bing) any references to a files= statement or config file in Windows 7 either.  There is no config.nt file. This is too simple … but did you look to see if the TM ID’s in tm.ini are the same and consistent with the install?  I remember a issue like this way back that was caused by one of the ID’s being changed by some other program. This is a stupid question, but are they trying to use Windows 7 Home? If so, that might be your problem.

Bottom line:

  • Windows 7 32 bit — The server in use does not seem to be relevant, just the workstation running TM.  I did not test ANY ‘home’ versions.  All Pro and I tried both simple shares and domain accounts.  All the same results.  The wizard that I was using is the Windows 7 compatibility wizard.  It only seems to fix a W7x64 to W7x64 issue but I didn’t try 64 bit w/s to 32 bit W7 server.  No point since the ‘fix’ just gets you in the once. I have now tried at 2 different sites and have not been able to get it to start on the 64 bit version of Windows 7 on a share.  System ID not defined or blank.  It will run fine off the C: drive.

I just talked a client thru getting Telemagic running on a Windows 7

  • Ultimate 64bit workstation. The environment is as follows:
    • Server:  Win2003 Server (Domain Environment)
    • Workstation: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
    • We ran thru several steps, but I think the main ones were:
    • Create a printer called TeleMagic Fax 35, and give everyone full rights.
    • Run DBUTIL Copy and Register. If you can’t get this to work while running it from the network drive, copy the installation to the local system to run it. It will have to be run with Administrator rights. When we ran this, it hung up while it was doing something with VFP6R. We killed it after a couple of minutes, and continued, and it seemed
      to work OK. This may be something that will occur at other sites, or just something about our site.
    • You may need to have a node install to run it. We made a node from the local copy of the installation, then changed the tm.ini in the c:\tm5node folder to point to the network installation.

We did get one strange error, at one point. It was saying that Spoolss.dll wasn’t found, and Telemagic exited. We then did the copy and register, and copied the spoolss.dll from the system32 folder back to the Telemagic programs folder on our local copy. Later, we tested, and found that this step was not necessary. I think it had something to do with the copy and register not being run. I’m going to test this with one more workstation, and then I’ll try to document something a little more formal. In the mean time, if anyone has the ability to test this, please do so.

  • Try the node install while accessing Telemagic via the network on Win7 64bit. BTW, after we got in fine with the node install, the client said that they tried it using the original shortcut, which went directly to the network programs folder, and that worked, as well. Go figure… The client did get some User Account Control messages the first time or two that they ran Telemagic, but after that it went away. This may be due to Telemagic changing the system time format. After further review, here are the steps we think you need to take to get Telemagic working on a network on Windows 7 64bit:
    1. Map the drive letter.
    2. Run the command prompt, with administrator privs.
    3. Map the drive letter again in the command window, using the Net Use
      command:
      Net Use T: \\server\share
    4. Run Database Utilities via the command window, and do the Copy &
      Register from the System menu (no need to log in):
      T:\tm5\programs\dbutil.exe
    5. Create a printer called TeleMagic Fax 35, with full rights to
      everyone.
    6. From the command window, run Telemagic to do the Workstation Setup:
      T:\tm5\programs\tm.exe
    7. Go to File/Workstation setup, and take all the defaults (leaving
      the userid/password blank).

Once the above is complete, you should be able to access Telemagic via the node shortcut on the desktop. If anyone encounters any issues with this, please let me know.

TM5SRV

On my freshly reinstalled Windows 7 RC 32-bit laptop, the code that launches SendMailToQueue does not produce any errors at all, however nothing gets populated in the TMFAX1 table.

The SendMailToQueue creates a header record with a unique mail key in it.  I’m not sure how that all works, but I did come up with another solution that I’m going to work on.

Since my TMAS works within a Windows 2000 Server VM, I’m going to write a program that runs on the Windows 2000 Server VM that looks at another table and will execute the  SendMailToQueue when a record gets populated.  So instead of executing SendMailToQueue on each workstation, I’ll write a program that writes to this temp DBF file instead so the program on the Win2K Server will execute the SendMailtoQueue command itself.

Does TeleMagic run on a 64-bit Windows Server? Windows 2008?

I have it running on Windows 7 (64-bit), and just selected Windows XP compatibility.  Chances are very good that it runs on Windows 2008, as well, since Microsoft seems to take some pains in running “legacy” software.

  • Mark all .EXE files as compatibility and run as administrator?  So far that has solved all of the issues for me with TM and Windows 7.
  • An experienced MSCE said that there was an unfixable issue with some legacy applications on Windows 7.  Waiting for SP1 for Windows 7 to see if it’s fixed, but in the meantime, the only solution is to download and install Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC from Microsoft website, and run the app on that.

 

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