Trouble accessing QBasic

[lukasiwicz]

I have Microsoft QBasic installed on my HP Pavilion 7965, running Windows XP Pro, Service Pack 2, but when I attempt to access the program by double-clicking its shortcut icon , the QBasic command screen appears only briefly, no longer than about a second, and then disappears. This happens whenever I try to run QBasic, with the result, of course, that I am unable to use the program. Any suggestions on how I might solve this problem?

[Ralph]

Since you have not eceived an answer, I will volunteer this: I had a lot of trouble trying to run QuickBASIC 4.5 when I started using Windows XP, and blamed it all on XP. In time, I was told that my problems were probably due to some program running in the background. It turned out to be true, and, since I stopped that program from running automatically in the background, QuickBASIC 4.5 has been running quite good.

So, if you will do the following, you will know if that is the case for you or not.

Click on Start, then on Run, and enter, msconfig, then OK. Now, click on the Startup tab there, go to the bottom and click on Disable All, Apply, Close, and restart you computer. Don't worry, you can always come back and Enable All.

Now, try to run QBasic. If it runs, you can go back to Start, Run, msconfig, Startup, Enable All, and then disable, say, half of the programs shown, Apply, Close, Restart, and try QB again. And so on, until you discover which program or programs are the culprits. Then, you can decide if you need to run them at certain times. If so, you might just make a shortcut for running it when you need to, then, closing it to run QB.

Let us know if my suggestion helps in any way. And, good luck!

[Mac]

Since you have not eceived an answer

Errk! We sure dropped the ball on this one.

Anyway, OP, if you come back (I can't believe he has waited patiently all this time for an answer), try this, too.

Do START, RUN, and enter "CMD". You should get a DOS window.

Using the CD command, migrate to the directory where your QBasic is located. You may have to change drives if it is not on the C-Drive. To go to the E-Drive, just enter "e:" at the prompt.

Now via dir *.exe, see if you have qb.exe or whatever your program is named.

If not, reinstall.

If so, just enter "qb" at the prompt.

If qbasic fails to run, reinstall.

If it runs fine, then your shortcut was bogus.

Make a new shortcut to qb.exe and use that in the future.

(If you got this far but the new shortcut is no better than the old one, then do the stuff Ralph said. If that doesn't help either, let us know, and try some other QBasic forums - not all gurus visit all forums.

Mac

[ToolmakerBasic]

Qbasic.exe , Qbasic.hlp , and Qbasic.ini files can be found on older computers that run dos. I had an older laptop I copied the files from onto a 3.5" floppy disc and put them in a folder all its' own. This is the only way I know of to get the files. I am sorry that I can't give them away , but this might be illegal. You may be able to do a search online to legally get these files.