NewDeal Technical Support Document 231

LAUNCHERS


How to create launchers, and how to solve launcher problems

A launcher lets you run DOS programs from NewManager or NewDesk just by double-clicking on an icon. NewDeal launchers can be moved or copied into any folder you want. You can also customize your launchers to run additional command line parameters automatically, or to prompt you for parameters.
  1. From the Utilities menu, choose Create Launcher.
  2. Click on the Drives button in the upper right. A list of all of your drives will appear.
  3. Click on the C: drive, or on the drive where the DOS program you want to launch is located.
  4. Scroll through the list of directories until you see the directory for the DOS program you want to launch and double-click on it.
  5. Find the .EXE or .COM file that launches the DOS application and click on it once to select it. (You can also use .BAT files, but they might not work as reliably as .EXE or .COM files).
  6. Click on the Use This File button. A DOS Launcher Settings dialog box will appear.
  7. Scroll through the icon display and click once on the icon you want to use for your launcher. In the Launcher Name field, you can enter the name that you want to appear below the icon.
  8. You can change the other settings to suit your preferences or leave them at the default settings. For more information about the other options, see the NewDeal manual.
  9. Click on Use These Settings. The icon for your new launcher will appear in the World or DOS Room folder, depending on the setting you chose for Place Launcher In:.

Launcher Problems

Most customers have no problems with launchers. However, if your launcher "hangs" when you double-click it, or the launcher doesn't allow you to return to NewDeal after you exit your DOS program, try these suggestions to solve the problem.

Use LOADER.EXE

When you type NEWDEAL or NDO or NDS to start your NewDeal software, you are running a batch file, which is a collection of DOS commands in one file. Depending on the directory you're in when you start the batch file, DOS might get confused about where to look for parts of the program when you try to use a launcher. Try running NewDeal by switching to the directory where NewDeal is installed, then entering LOADER.

If you're familiar with batch files, you can edit NEWDEAL.BAT to run LOADER.EXE from the right directory. Simply add the line

CD\NEWDEAL
right before the line
LOADER %1 %2 %3 %4
.

Mouse Driver Problems

Sometimes modifying the settings for your mouse solves launcher problems. Try these suggestions:

Increase the Number of Handles

Launch Preferences and click on the Newdeal (or NewDOS or GEOS) button. Increase the Number of Handles to 3500.

Increase the Number of Files

In your CONFIG.SYS file, increase the number of FILES to 100 or 150. This will use up some additional RAM, but it might help launchers to run better.

Check for Conflicting TSRs

Make your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files as clean as possible. REMark out each TSR and test the launchers. If they work, un-REM each TSR in turn, testing the launchers after each one, until you find the conflicting TSR. See your DOS manual for more information on the REM command.

COMMAND.COM

Increase the size of your environment to 1 K byte by editing the SHELL line in your CONFIG.SYS file. Change the /E: parameter to read /E:1024. If you don't see a SHELL line in your CONFIG.SYS file, add one that looks like this:
SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS /P /E:1024
Make sure there is a copy of COMMAND.COM in the root directory of your C: drive.

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Last Modified 17 Feb 1999