With the development of the times, computers are constantly being updated and replaced, and their speed is getting faster and faster. But after some netizens upgraded their computers, while experiencing the faster speed of the computer, they found that programs that used to run normally could no longer run. For example, NeoSoft Phantom, WWPack, etc., when started, only display one line of the error message “Runtime error 200” and then exit. What is going on? How should it be solved?
It turns out that this is a problem existing in the compiler used to compile the program. As everyone knows, no program is perfect; the key only lies in whether the problems in these programs are serious, how likely they are to occur, and so on. If there is a problem inside, but it rarely occurs, so that no one discovers it, then it has little impact. However, if a problem occurs and then happens frequently, and is relatively serious, then the situation is different; and some problems do not occur when they first appear, and no one notices them, but because they are after all a hidden danger, they may only show up later and cause consequences. The “Runtime error 200” mentioned above is the latter situation.
So what exactly is this problem? Those netizens who discovered this problem knew that it did not occur on earlier computers, so they guessed that the computer’s speed in this problem (mainly referring to the CPU frequency) was a very important factor causing the problem to appear, and the facts are indeed so. Through observation it was found that running these programs on computers around PII 200MHz and above would produce problems: only one error message appears and then startup stops, making them completely unable to run. But these programs run without problems on computers below PII 200MHz.
The compiler that causes this problem is Borland (Turbo) Pascal 7.0/7.01 (hereinafter abbreviated as BP7). This problem does not exist in versions before BP7 (such as BP5), and exists only in BP7. Why is that? It turns out that BP5 had another problem, namely that programs compiled with this compiler could not run on computers below 386-33. In order to solve this problem, Borland made some fixes and added some new functions, and released version 7.0. However, this fix produced the hidden danger of an even more serious problem, namely the problem mentioned above. It is just that at the time, because computers’ CPU frequencies were still far from reaching 200MHz, neither Borland nor ordinary users or programmers discovered it. It was not until later, with the large-scale appearance of faster computers such as the PII, that this problem was exposed and caused an impact. After study, people found that the root cause of this problem is an erroneous time delay in the CRT unit in programs compiled with the TP7 compiler, so this problem is also called the CRT unit problem.
Since this is the case, how should this problem be solved? As everyone knows, the condition for the CRT unit problem to occur is that the CPU clock speed must be greater than 200MHz, so naturally it makes people think of using a slowdown method to make these programs run normally. Yes, this is indeed a good method. Therefore, many people have released such slowdown programs, such as CPU Killer, etc. However, the best one among them is a program called SLOWDOWN (available for download in “DOS Software”). It is software that is still being continuously upgraded even now, and the highest version at present is version 3.0. Its functions are very powerful, and it has many command-line options; you can enter SLOWDOWN /? to view the help. It can not only slow down DOS, but also slow down Windows, and of course it can also slow down each DOS window in Windows. Once it is used to reduce the speed to below about 200MHz, those programs can run. Moreover, the SLOWDOWN software runs very stably and can be added to AUTOEXEC.BAT. So, how should it be used?
Actually, it is very easy to operate. There are two operating methods: one is command-line mode, and the other is TSR, that is, memory-resident mode. If you want to use the former method, for example, using the command SLOWDOWN /P:55 WWPACK will run the WWPACK program at 55% speed. If you want to use the latter method, directly enter the (LH) SLOWDOWN command to load it into memory, and then at any time you can press hotkeys to adjust the system’s running speed. For example, Ctrl+Alt+4 is 40% speed, and Ctrl+Alt+0 restores the original speed. Moreover, these two methods can also be used together. For example, while using TSR mode, use command-line mode to achieve temporary slowdown, and after the program finishes running, restore the speed. In fact, these programs compiled with TP7 only cannot run because of speed when they are starting up; once they start running, there is no problem. Therefore, you can slow down only when the program first starts, and restore the system’s original speed as soon as it begins running, in order to make full use of the computer’s maximum efficiency. At this time you only need to press the Ctrl+Alt+0 key combination. In addition, each press of Ctrl+Alt+plus increases the speed by 10%, each press of Ctrl+Alt+minus decreases the speed by 10%, and so on. It can be seen that everything can be controlled manually. How convenient!
Of course, besides using slowdown software, there is another very practical method. As mentioned above, the CRT unit problem is caused by the problematic CRT unit generated by TP7, so if software can be used to repair the CRT unit, then these programs can be made to run normally permanently. Therefore, some people have released such repair tools, such as TPP, BP7PAT, etc. Among them, BP7PAT can be downloaded from “File Tools” under “DOS Software”. For example, using TPP INSTALL.EXE can repair the CRT unit in the INSTALL.EXE file, allowing this program to run normally. However, because some programs have been compressed with some compression software, these programs need to be extracted first (such as with tools like UNP, CUP386, etc.), and then repaired. Obviously, if some software has undergone special encryption (such as WWPack, etc.) and cannot be unpacked, then these one-time repair tools are not applicable. But there is another method, namely using the TSR, memory-resident method: first run some repair tools specifically for fixing this problem (such as PROT 200), and then run the program with the CRT unit problem. Because those memory-resident repair tools can automatically make the subsequent programs with the CRT unit problem run normally, without needing to modify the files themselves. This is also a very good method.
However, the most fundamental way to solve the CRT unit problem is to repair the BP7 software itself, so that programs compiled with it will no longer have this problem. There are also some programs that can repair BP7 itself, so I will not introduce them in detail here.
In short, if a suitable method is used, “Runtime error 200” can be completely solved. If you also encounter the error message “Runtime error 200”, you might as well try the methods introduced above.
Author: Wengier
MSN：tiqit2@hotmail.com
DigestI
