App won't run in Win95--then, it does!

[stardog]

Hi, there.

One of our customers loaded the new version of our
lightweight CAD-type program and reported that it
wouldn't run on his Win95 computer. He'd click the
desktop icon or the .exe in Windows Explorer and bupkus--
nothing happens.

I loaded on a Win95 machine here and got the same result.
Then, on a whim, I installed DCOM95.EXE and IE 5.5, SP2.
Voila--application runs. But I don't know why.

I'm loathe to tell our customer to install DCOM95.EXE and
upgrade his copy of IE (probably 3) without understanding
what happened here. I don't want to wreck the guy's
computer.

Basic differences between our old app (which ran fine)
and new one are these:

Old CAD-type app
16-bit
Compiled with Borland C++ 4.52
Uses Borland OWL interface objects

New CAD-type app
32-bit
Compiled with MS VC 6
Uses MS MFC interface objects

Anybody have any ideas about this? I don't know whether
to try this stuff with my customer or run for the hills.
He hasn't run any OS upgrades in six years and to top it
all off, I have to support him by phone.

Sheesh...and thanks.

 

[BOKA]

From what you are describing, there is a chance that the app needs one or more of MS runtime libraries - something like MSVCPxx.DLL or MSVCRTxx.DLL. Check with your developers if you can, otherwise it is trial-and-error, copy files either to app directory or to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.

Good luck.