Thanks for this information, Gerhard. Yes, you're right about it being Win 7 64
bit. From looking further into this, it seems that you are correct in saying
that 32-bit programs can't access system32 on Windows 7. Apparently, the shell
redirects requests to system32 from 32-bit programs to the corresponding 32-bit
equivalents in SysWow64. And from checking the contents of SysWow64, the files
I was trying to load in the shortcut aren't there.
So that seems to explain it. Although vpc.exe exists in system32, because an
equivalent of it does not exist in SysWow64, the shell returned the error
message that it could not be found.
Seems I'll have to make do with a double-click from my desktop rather than a
more convenient PowerPro button.
Thanks again for the help.
Cheers
John
--- In [email protected], Gerhard Fiedler <geli...@...> wrote:
>
> 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
>
