Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
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Boy... now there's a blast from the past. QBasic has a long history dating back to the days of MS-DOS. QBasic was the free Basic programming language interpreter that was included with MS-DOS, and eventually Windows, though it appears to have vanished from Windows XP, if not from earlier versions.
I feel a personal connection to QBasic. Why? I worked on it!
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First, your question: ".PIF" files were the way that older versions of Windows kept track of the settings for some applications. Each application, say QBasic.exe, would have a corresponding PIF file, such as QBasic.pif.
In Windows XP, I believe it's safe to simply remove the QBasic.pif file. Try renaming it first, and seeing if that resolves your problem. You can also try right-clicking on the PIF file in Windows Explorer, selecting Properties, and changing the startup directory, that your error message is complaining about.
I dug up an old copy of QBasic and fired it up, without a .PIF file, on my Windows XP system:
Like I said it brings back memories. While at Microsoft I worked on the on-line help technology used in QBasic's predecessor, QuickBasic, several other products, and in QBasic. Need proof? In a command shell, Type the on-line help file qbasic.hlp. The first two bytes are the "signature" that define what kind of a file this is. The signature for character mode help files? My initials: LN.
Article C2480 - December 5, 2005 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
September 3, 2010 2:11 AM
My problem is a moody Turbo C++ program. I got the same error message. So I cleaned out all of the guilty pif files. What do I do now? How do I start it up?
September 5, 2010 2:28 AM
I found the pif file - QB [Surprisingly it did not have the extension '.pif' in the name, although I do not hide extensions]. In Properties > Program I set the 'Cmd line' to the correct path to the file, and 'Working' to the correct path to the folder. That solved the problem.
I also ticked 'close on exit' here, & 'window' under Screen. Under 'Memory' I set 'EMS' to 'none', 'XMS' to 'auto' and ticked 'use HMA'. That made it work better I think.
January 1, 2011 11:50 AM
Thanks for your help! I no longer get the error, but now the game won't run. It seems to run for a fraction of a second, and then disappears. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
July 23, 2011 8:10 AM
hi sir i wank your kind info from one question??????
i was opened TURBO C++ wizard . its warmed as unrecoverable error , why this error found plz reply me
December 13, 2011 11:24 PM
Thanks; renaming qb.pif by dropping the .pif extension, worked.