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I need help tracing down the source of this error I'm getting. I'm guessing somebody who was doing C++ in the DOS era could have seen it already. Maybe it is not an OS error but an application error colored red.

I would be grateful if somebody could answer the following:

  • what exactly is a corrupted background structure error
  • where could I find a manual for fm_rd , fm_ed .. and other listed stack functions (are those functions at all ?) ? I'm hoping that knowing what they are will help me locate the exact moment the error triggers.

All the info I have that could possibly help:

  • it's an old single core Pentium (error popped on AMD machine also and others) with an ATA disk.
  • I presume it's coded in C++
  • uses Paradox DB
  • occurs at the moment I try to print out some accounting data and save changes to disk(DB).(it's actually 2 operations in one so I'm not sure which one errors out)
  • nothing prints , nothing saves to DB
  • FAT filesystem

I'll update in the morning if I find anything in the machine's logs.

Thank you all very much in advance!!

This is the screenshot: http://cityinfo.hr/fotka.jpg

Mark Hall
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Vedran Bakija
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  • +1 for RSOD and sharing such a magnificent screenshot. – karlphillip Jan 18 '12 at 00:35
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    DOS had absolutely no mechanism for doing such a thing on its own. This is 100% part of the application, and most likely a sign that there's a bug in the application, causing it to detect valid data as corrupted (perhaps it has a Y2K12 bug). Your best bet is to contact the developer; if that's not possible, then it's going to be very tough to do anything about it. – Michael Madsen Jan 18 '12 at 01:00
  • Thank you both on quick responses. Thanks Mark for adding the pic i had no points for doing it. I've sent allready the HDD and the whole machine to the developer funny thing he never saw it in all this years of selling the app. The problem being recurrent on multiple machines BUT in only one store, i'm thinking I have some kind of weird data in those books corrupting the operation... but still without knowing what this bg struct. error means, im not sure if to look at buffer overflows or some DB errors. – Vedran Bakija Jan 18 '12 at 01:40
  • "in all this years of selling the app" - people still sell and support DOS apps? (And they debug them too)? – selbie Jan 18 '12 at 01:50
  • @selbie: Actually, yes! I'm working for a company that has some "embedded" DOS stuff going on ;) Although, to be fair, the old software and product are going out of business end of this year. I'm currently working on the replacement. – arne Jan 18 '12 at 06:20
  • I knew DOS was still popular for embedded development. I was just surprised that there was a vendor still supporting an accounting package on it. – selbie Jan 18 '12 at 07:32
  • I still successfully market and support an MS-DOS 6.22 app which runs fine under Microsoft Virtual PC!.. Sounds like you might have a virus or disk corruption which could be fixed with chkdsk, anti-virus prog. or get an earlier backup copy of the app. – Joe R. Mar 26 '12 at 03:39

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