"Failed to Open Graphics Server" Can Mean No Windows Resources

ID Number: Q80780

1.00

WINDOWS

buglist1.00

Summary:

With the Visual Basic programming environment (VB.EXE) running and

with very low available Windows resources (0 to 1 percent), attempting

to load the GRAPH.VBX Visual Basic custom control will incorrectly

generate the following messages

Failed to open Graphics Server.

GSW.EXE must be available via the DOS path.

followed by another error message:

Can't load the custom control DLL: "C:\VB\GRAPH.VBX"

These messages incorrectly imply that the problem is that GSW.EXE is

not in the MS-DOS path, when in fact the custom control could not load

because of a lack of Windows 3.0 resources.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the GRAPH.VBX custom

control provided with Microsoft Professional Toolkit for Microsoft

Visual Basic programming system version 1.0 for Windows. We are

researching this problem and will post new information here as it

becomes available.

More Information:

A prerequisite to recreate this problem is to deplete Windows system

resources until the Program Manager Help About dialog box reports 1

percent or less resources available. To verify the level of resources

available, from the Program Manager Help menu, choose About.

One way to deplete Windows resources is to launch as many sessions of

NOTEPAD.EXE as possible before getting an error message (start Visual

Basic before all of the Notepad sessions).

Steps to Reproduce Problem

--------------------------

With 1 percent or less resources available, the following procedure

will generate the above error messages:

1. From the File menu, choose New Project. Form1 will be created by

default.

2. From the File menu, choose Add File, and select the GRAPH.VBX

custom control.

Additional reference words: 1.00