I run a very old (1990) package of Btrieve based programs in my dental
practice using Brtieve 5.00. We run it under win 98 in a dos box

Since the year 2000 came, we have had intermitent problems with the
different modules in the suite failing to hand over to each other but
crashing back to DOS with the error message "damaged or corrupted message
block" "unable to load command.com"

This may be due to an error in the code of the dental programs or a known
fault with Btrieve. Any Ideas as to cause and remedy.

An additional fault which started at about the same time is that the main
program (designed to display a patient's treatment record) only allows us
to see back for about 2 years, even though the data is there for almost 14
years. Resetting the date will allow us to see further back if we wish,
Again any thoughts please

Donald Mackenzie

Btrieve is a store & retrieve tool. In itself it has little to no
understanding of the data it is keeping. All falls back to the
application that uses Btrieve as a storage medium and what format this
application uses to store its values. Btrieve has predefined date and
time formats, but it is up to the programmer to use these formats. A
DOS programmer may have chosen to use the DOS date format (which is a
two byte integer) instead though. You may be in trouble if this
integer is an index that is defined as a signed integer.

Having trouble seeing what format might have been used that would
roll-over somewhere in 2001 / 2002.....

Gordon

On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 18:09:05 -0400, "DonaldMac"
<donald (AT) donald-mackenzie (DOT) co.uk> wrote:


Gordon Bos
Q-RY Solutions
+31-(0)15-2564035

http://www.q-ry.nl/