Re: Windows update may have broken SwiftForth and SwiftX!?

Fellow Forth-ers!

A while ago, I posted a note about my installations of SwiftX and SwiftForth
ceasing to run due to a missing tty.dll and attributing the problem to a
windows update.

The problem has been solved with the help of Leon Wagner and Elizabeth
Rather and here are the details in case anyone else runs into such a
problem.

First of all, it's not likely that the problem was caused by Windows Update
but probably by an aggressive anti-virus and/or ant-spyware program. On my
somewhat older installations (of both SwiftX and SwiftForth), the Forth,
Inc. version of tty.dll was installed in ..\Windows\System32. (I specify the
Forth, Inc. version because there is a much smaller MS version of tty.dll
that won't do the job.)

Later versions of SwiftX and SwiftForth put the tty.dll into the home
directory of the program, i.e. into ...\SwiftForth\Bin and/or
...\SwiftX\Bin.

So, my fix was to copy the Forth, Inc. tty.dll from an unaffected machine
(or you could use the distribution disk) and put a copy in each of those
directories mentioned in the proceeding paragraph.

I will also copy tty.dll from the ..\windows\system32 directory to those
"home" directories on all the other systems on which I'm working though they
may be unaffected currently!

Live long and prosper,
Charles
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Leon Wagner [mailto:leon_at_forth.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2006 6:51 PM
To: 'Charles Ehrenpreis'
Subject: RE: [swiftx] Windows update may have broken SwiftForth and SwiftX!?

One more thing... Please take a minute or two and post your results back to
the two mailing lists (sftalk and swiftx). I'm sure at least a few people
will be relieve to hear from you (and make them less fearful of MS updates
:).

--Leon
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Ehrenpreis [mailto:charlese_at_adelphia.net]
> Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2006 3:26 PM
> To: 'Leon Wagner'; erather_at_forth.com
> Subject: RE: [swiftx] Windows update may have broken
> SwiftForth and SwiftX!?
>
> Dear Leon and Elizabeth,
>
> Thanks for your extremely rapid response to my problem. With
> your help, I did solve the problem, and you are right that it
> was not likely to have been the Windows update but rather a
> "virus checker" or something of that ilk.
> (Incidentally, I'm not using McAffee but rather Symantec's
> NAV and MS's "Windows Defender" anti-spyware). In any event,
> tty.dll was nowhere to be found except for the Microsoft one
> in C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386 which as you pointed out,
> doesn't work.
>
> I remotely accessed another machine on which everything was
> still working, and found the Forth tty.dll in
> C:\windows\system32 and nowhere else, but SwiftX and
> SwiftForth were both working well on that system. I then
> copied that tty.dll into the ...\SwiftForth\Bin and
> ...\SwiftX\Bin directories and all was well again. So, once
> again, thanks!
>
> On another topic, for the last 4 years, I've been contracting
> to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in
> Cambridge, MA on the SolarB project. I was brought onto this
> project by an old friend from our no longer extant FIG
> chapter, the late Roger Hauck. I don't know if you've heard,
> but we had a successful launch of the satellite at the end of
> September from Japan, and the X-ray telescope is now
> providing the best x-ray images of the sun EVER! So, yet
> another significant space project powered by Forth and in
> particular SwiftX for the 69R000. So, yet another thing to
> thank you for!!
>
> Live long and prosper,
> Charles Ehrenpreis
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Leon Wagner [mailto:leon_at_forth.com]
> Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 2:41 PM
> To: 'Charles Ehrenpreis'
> Subject: RE: [swiftx] Windows update may have broken
> SwiftForth and SwiftX!?
>
> Hi Charles,
>
> I will answer you off the list and then we can report a summary of our
> results later...
>
> We haven't seen or heard this (and we're fully up to date
> with our XP Pro
> SP2 updates).
>
> Can you capture shots of each of those dialog boxes and email
> to us? Paste
> them in to an HTML email (Alt+PrintScreen with the dialog box
> active, then
> Ctrl+V in the blank HTML email) and send them to support_at_forth.com.
>
> Are you running any anti-virus software? We had an issue
> with PC-Cillin
> some time ago that caused it to think TTY.DLL was a virus
> (maybe because
> it's really small and has a tiny PE header) and was deleting it.
>
> The location(s) for TTY.DLL should be:
>
> ...\SwiftForth\Bin
> ...\SwiftX\Bin
>
>
> Also, have you tried to reinstall SwiftX and/or SwiftForth?
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Leon Wagner
> FORTH, Inc.
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: swiftx-bounce_at_forth.com
> > [mailto:swiftx-bounce_at_forth.com] On Behalf Of Charles Ehrenpreis
> > Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 11:31
> > To: sftalk_at_forth.com; swiftx_at_forth.com
> > Subject: [swiftx] Windows update may have broken SwiftForth
> > and SwiftX!?
> >
> > Has anyone else had this problem?
> >
> > On two different WindowsXP-Pro systems, each of which has had
> > the latest
> > updates from MS, I can no longer run either SwiftForth nor SwiftX.
> > Attempting to do so gives a dialog box saying that tty.dll
> > can't be found
> > and then aborting. When I copied the tty.dll from the most
> > recent service
> > pack into the home directory from which SwiftForth executes,
> > I didn't get
> > that error, but instead got a series of dialog boxes
> > complaining about not
> > finding a number of processes all beginning with "tty", and
> > after exiting
> > from each of these dialog boxes in sequence, then I got the
> SwiftForth
> > console window and an immediate abort!
> >
> > I'm hoping that this is a known problem and someone has a fix!
> >
> > Live long and prosper,
> > Charles Ehrenpreis
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
>
>

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Received on Wed Nov 15 2006 - 19:10:57 PST