johngslng wrote: > I've been using Power Pro successfully on Windows 7 for some time. I > don't do anything exotic with it - just bars to launch programs and > the scheduler - and this all seems to work fine. However, I recently > came across a surprising problem. > > I was trying to set up a command button to launch Windows 7 XP Mode. > The shortcut for this when launched from the desktop or elsewhere is > as follows: > > Command: %SystemRoot%\system32\rundll32.exe Parameters: > %SystemRoot%\system32\VMCPropertyHandler.dll,LaunchDefaultVM > > However, a Power Pro command using these values failed to launch XP > Mode, returning an error message that module VMCPropertyHandler.dll > could not be found. I then created a Windows Script to run XP Mode > and entered the name of the script as the program to run for the > Power Pro command. Although the script, when run directly from the > desktop, successfully started XP Mode, the script when run from Power > Pro surprisingly gave rise to the same error message. > > In a further attempt to get Power Pro to start XP Mode, I then > attempted to run the Virtual PC executable vpc.exe which is located > in %SystemRoot%\system32. This produced a message saying that > vpc.exe could not be found. In a final attempt, instead of typing in > the path to vpc.exe directly, I used the browse button in the Power > Pro 'Edit List Item' dialogue to locate vpc.exe and found that > vpc.exe did not show up in the Power Pro 'File Open' dialogue. > Neither did VMCPropertyHandler.dll (from the original parameters) nor > several other executables and dlls, all of which could be clearly > seen in Windows Explorer. It seems that these files for some reason > are not visible to Power Pro. > > Furthermore, the fact that Power Pro could start the Windows Script > but nevertheless gave the message that did VMCPropertyHandler.dll > could not be found, suggests that any process started by Power Pro > will not have access (will not be able to find) this file and, > presumably, the other files which are not visible in the Power Pro > Open File dialogue. > > Note that I was running Windows as an Administrator so presumably > PowerPro should have had the necessary privileges to see any file > that I could see in Windows Explorer. > > Any ideas what the problem could be?
I don't know Windows 7 that well, but could it be that you're running the x64 version? If so, 32-bit programs (like PowerPro) don't normally have access to anything in system32. There is a sister folder SysWOW64 where all the 32-bit system programs and DLLs are, and which is transparently replaced for system32 for 32-bit programs. The shell can run as both, so if you run a shell script from a 64-bit program, it runs in 64-bit mode and has access to system32 as system32. But if you run it from a 32-bit program, it has access only to SysWOW64 as system32. This transparent re-routing affects everything related to file access, including the file dialogs. I don't know for sure, but I think there is a way to disable this re-routing from within a 32-bit program. Gerhard
