VirtualBox / W2K App Default Directory Issue

questions
1

I have just moved off a 2013 MacBook OSX Mavericks host running Parallels 9 running W2K SP4. Everything has worked great, only moved because of browser issues on the old OSX, and the performance of new macOS and new parallels give horrible / unacceptable performance for my W2K guest setup. W2K support has also been dropped from Parallels.

W2K is where I spend most my time. I have wanted to move to Linux for some time, now done.

New environment is 2020 Intel “T2” MacBook, “T2” Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon running VirtualBox v7.0.16_Ubuntu (with guest additions installed) running W2K SP4.

On the W2K guest, resources are as follows:
C: is the W2K OS Drive
D: is Development Drive (this is the drive used in this discussion)
E: is Data Drive
F: is Data Drive

The apps on both W2K guests are the same, nothing has changed, although the VirtualBox install is a new build.

Data on all 3 drives must be accessible by Host applications, therefore D, E and F are Host partitions setup as shares to the W2K guest. Only C: is .VDI and thus inaccessible to the host.

The W2K app I use the most, and I am having an issue with, is Clarion 5.5.0 (issue is somewhat patch level dependent). Thus far I have not seen any issues with other apps, just this one.

The common directory is the issue.

Under VirtualBox Clarion does not run the compiled EXE on run, saying it can’t find the EXE. The full path it shows is correct.

I have tried this with the host drive formatted EXT4 and NTFS, no difference. Original Mac partitions were HFS+.

Its tempting to point the finger at Clarion, but “nothing changed” if the VM is truly emulating W2K, I’ve had no issues with Parallels, nor have I had issues with non virtual network shares through the years.

Any help for fix this issue is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

~Cross Post at VirtualBox(dot)org. Playing around more with the different patch level the issue expresses very differently. I have written a simple Stop(‘Hello World’) app that has the issue. I’ve no clue how to further divide and conquor this.

2

I run Mageia Linux and virtualbox.
It’s been a while, but I had all sort of problems initially running clarion off a shared folder.
I eventually created an other vdi drive for development and all works well. That does mean I do an amount of copying of files around to other shared folders when neccessary, but at the time it was well worth it. That was many years ago thoough.

3

No idea if this is the same kind of issue that you’re having, but something to look at Clarion5 error on compile - #3 by jslarve

4

Thank you both very much for your quick responses!

I have thought about the VDI approach and effectively demonstrated it copying a project to C:. Worked fine. But I am fighting that do to significant sharing across the OS’s.

I have tried a LOT of things thus far, 8.3 had not come to mind. As a quick test I renamed the folders along a path to 8.3 and it worked! So despite the IDE showing long paths, its using 8.3 for its actual I/O. That gives me a LOT of hope.

Going to try some more tests then look at that fsutil.

Thank you!!! :slight_smile:

5

Clarion 5.5.0 to 5.5.7 work fine, all the same now using 8.3

fsutil does not appear to be available on windows 2000 server SP4. Any other way I may address this?

TIA!

6

Not sure. I think there are some registry settings you could try. At some point, 8dot3 was system wide and not per volume. ChatGPT probably has the info you need.

7

Thank you for your continued help!

8

Don’t remember when LONGPATH started…