Newbie, Recreate MSDOS shortcut in autoexec for paradox 3.5?

[miked]

Hello, firstly thank you for this software I think it is exactly what I am after although I am not sure of what I am doing.
A friend uses a very old accounting system and have previously used a combination of old XP machines and VMs

I am just looking for how to recreate this shortcut in the autoexec and/or config files so that I can test if this will work using vDOS? 
The software has a path to a particular company/entities as shown on the attached image.
C:\ACCOUNTS\Menu


I have this:

cd pdoxrun

pdoxrunr c:\accounts\menu

exit
Which I think does it but it feels like guesswork and I wondered if it should be different? The program requires me to type "exit" twice before getting into it.



The full path on the cmd line below in the image is:
C:\PDOXRUN\PDOXRUNR.EXE C:\ACCOUNTS\Menu






If that all goes well  
As a secondary question what is the best way to open a different path/entity? Eg:
They have several of these:

C:\ACCOUNTS\Menu

C:\COMPANY1\Menu

C:\COMPANY2\Menu

I have seen that I should be able to copy the altered autoexec and config files into the COMPANY1 folder for example then have a vdos shortcut to the path ? 

Thank you very much for your time .. it is greatly apprecited!

[Jos]

To start with, add a line "FONT = -" to config.txt, so those Ê’s become line segments.

Your autoexec.txt seems fine. Don’t know about having to type EXIT twice, that wasn’t before?

I assume you have this directory structure:

C:\vDos
|- pdoxrun
|- ACCOUNTS
|- COMPANY1
|- COMPANY2

If the only difference between starting the individual accounts is that second line in autoexec.txt, change that to:
pdoxrunr %WIN_VDOS%

Create 3 copies of the vDos Desktop shortcut. In the properties of the new shortcuts append C:\ACCOUNTS\Menu, C:\COMPANY1\Menu or C:\COMPANY2\Menu to the target (C:\vDos\vDos.exe ). Give the shortcuts some descriptive name.

You can of course move the C:\vDos folder to any location, as long the shortcut properties target points to vDos.exe in that location.

Jos

[miked]

Thank you so much Jos, That seems to have done the trick. I have sent it back to them to test their files hopefully with a good outcome.

[miked]

Thanks again for your help. We have tested it and the program opens ok and we can see some details (bank accounts etc) but when tryingt to view/print .. I assume it errors out and goes back to the prompt (first and seconds screenshot)... maybe it cannot find the data? sorry for the size of these screenshots 4k monitor

In XP all of these files are in C:/ but I guessed it didnt matter using vDOS ... maybe it does? 

[Jos]

You made sure the program data files were copied while no instance of the program was running?

To the DOS program the files/folders previously in Windows XP C: now have to match those in vDos C:, so Windows D:\vDos.

Could be in Windows XP the environment variable PATH was set to locate some required program components.

Or some file/folder is actually mislocated or missing. Eventually start vDos with the log option (Target: D:\vDos\vDos.exe /log C:\ACCOUNTS\Menu). Look in the generated vDos.log file for invalid file/folder references.

For screenshots you could first make the vDos window smaller by Win+F11 or Ctrl+mouse wheel.

Jos