Q&A Works Great in Windows 95 and Windows 98!

The following is from the March 1998 issue of Tom Marcellus' The Quick Answer monthly newsletter on Q&A. This article addresses the proper operation of Q&A on fast computers with large hard drives, and the Windows95 environment. The authors are Bill Halpern and Gordon Meigs of Professional Computer Technology Associates, who requested that this information be provided. According to Gordon, they are receiving numerous "panic calls" from Q&A users that apparently are receiving erroneous information from Symantec.

From The Quick Answer's March 1998 @Help column....

Since so many people have asked about some variation of this problem, this will cover installations involving Q&A 4.0 & 5.0, Pentium and Pentium II machines, and Windows 95.

Q&A, as well as all other DOS and Windows 3.X programs, and most 16bit Windows 95 programs, will not run properly on a drive larger than 1.88 Gb (depending on how you measure, a Gb that could be anywhere from 1.8 - 2.0). I'd be surprised if the computer manufacturer did not supply your drives already partitioned into 2Gb partitions. If they didn't, you can use a program called Partition Magic to painlessly, and safely, allow you to change your partitions to any size you want, even after there is data on them.

Most newer systems come with Windows95 OEM SR2 installed as the operating system. The best way to install Q&A is to boot the machine to a Command Prompt - MSDOS Mode (one of the options under the Start, Shut Down menu in Windows95), install Q&A as you normally would, and then reboot to Windows and create a shortcut to the Q&A program which has the following properties:

Command Line: C:\QA5\QA.Com
Memory: Conventional - Auto
Initial Environment - 1024*
Expanded Memory – 1024**
Extended Memory - 1024
MS-DOS Memory - Auto
No Screen saver
No Fast Paste
Close on exit

* As per 07/16/98 e-mail from Bill Halpern. He says that Q&A v5 runs even better in Win95/98 if the Initial Environment memory size is "1024". This is provided you have enough memory available (and most everyone does, these days). If you don't, he says even a value of "512" is better than using the "Auto" value. **Remember, the expanded memory is critical to version 5.0. It may not appear to be available in the properties memory tab on all makes of computer. If you have one of those, just add the following lines to your config.sys, reboot the machine, and everything will be fine:

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM
DOS=HIGH,UMB

Q&A 5.0 is very sensitive to machine type and overall processor speed. It does not readily recognize a Pentium II machine if it is running at a processor speed in excess of 180MHz. So, we have to slow down the session in which Q&A 5.0 is running. You can get a slow down utility from the Q&A User's Group web site (WWW.QAUG.COM) *** and set it to slow down the Q&A session (Approx. 75% on a 233MHz system). Do not worry, this will not affect the speed of the computer in any other window or operation. It will only set Q&A to run as fast as it can on the Pentium II processor. If you are running with Q&A 4.0, there is NO need for any slow down utility, it runs just fine! If your machine is a ‘plain’ Pentium running a processor speed of up to 233 MMX, both Q&A 4.0 and 5.0 will run just fine on it.

Gordon Meigs & Bill Halpern  

*** Mo'Slo is available on Dr. David's Super Crispy Software web site at http://www.hpaa.com/moslo

Q&A with Windows 98
Yeah, I'm nuts, I installed Windows 98 on its rollout day. I really had no choice because all our customers kept asking "will Q&A run in Windows 98?"  The answer, although somewhat qualified after only a day of playful testing, is a resounding "YES!".  I have encountered no problems to date.  I have run network pack, standalone, Alt-F9 second copies, Mass Update, Posting, Xposting, interface with Win98 applications, Windowed, Full Screen, Macros, Menus, Recover, Printing, Word Processor, F6 fields, Mouse, etc.. with no failures or hangups.  '98 is supposed to be more stable than '95.  We'll see.  

Bill Halpern - June 29, 1998