An Open Question for Charles Moir

[SCync]

I most humbly resort to addressing this forum to find a solution to a problem that I have repeatedly asked your Customer Service people about.

The following is your unique ticket number:
[contact.xara.com #14380].

[Charles Moir]

All I can do is point our customer services people at this post and hope they reply to the ticket - obviously not in the office until Monday now.

[gwpriester]

Sometimes you can get a quick answer here. A lot of us are here on the weekend as well. Give us a try :-)

Gary

[SCync]

Thank you, Charles. OK, everybody, nothing to see, here. Go about your business.

Hey Gary, I posted before your reply. The problem is that I tried to install the demo on my son's Win98 machine, to see if he'd like it, and we get a message: "Xara Xtreme requires a more recent version of MFC ", and refers me to a dead link. I don't know what this is, and does it mean that he'll have to go to XP (which I've told him he should do, anyway, but he gives me the impoverished college student excuse!!) or should Xara work on a 98 machine. I just don't know what the MFC is, and Googling has got me nowhere.

Anyway, that's all it is, nothing, I thought, to bother the forum, about. Thanks for your interest.

[MerryOtter]

"MFC" is a finger-lickin'-good variety of chicken...

Oh, wait Sorry I'm mixed up!

Actually MFC is "Microsoft Foundation Classes" and it is basically the core software routines used by all software created with Microsoft compilers. You can get a detailed explanation of MFC at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFC

Programmers use MFC so they don't have to "reinvent the wheel" -- it includes things like pre-packaged user interface components, file-saving routines, etc.

You should not have to go with Windows XP in order to use Xara, because the minimum requirements on the product site state, "Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP."

But, you might need to visit Windows Update and ensure your son's computer has all the latest patches installed. If you are up to date and Xara Xtreme still doesn't work, try this download from Microsoft (sorry I cannot verify that it will solve the problem because I don't have a Windows 98 machine handy):

http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/d...es/Default.asp

Having said that, a program that requires a certain version of MFC routines ought to install them if they are not present. Perhaps it's omitted to keep the download small and they will do this on the CD version.

Please let us know if this corrects the trouble.

Merry

[SCync]

Thanks very much,MerryOtter. That's really helpful, and gives me a good idea of where to look.

[Koinonia]

I had a similar problem on installing to a laptop with Windows ME.
I finally found an entry in the Support/Xara Xtreme tab on the xara.com website about downloading and installing.
It referred me to these file downloads. And they fixed the problems.
Maybe those are dead links? Just tried them and they are OK...

Wayne D

[MerryOtter]

Ah, yes... useful links and it's a good reminder to check the Xara knowledgebase as well as the help files.

Unfortunately, the MFCs are a different animal than GDI+ or MSXML4. But, they are all "code libraries" provided by Microsoft. GDI stands for "Graphical Device Interface" and lets developers write code to a standardized set of commands without worrying about what particular video card a user might have installed. MSXML4 is a similar set of routines which let programmers access and manipulate data organized in the XML format. Windows XP has all of these animals pre-installed more or less. Earlier operating systems do not have them, or have obsolete versions.

The link I provided is the only package I was able to locate on Microsoft.com which enables end users to obtain the latest MFC libraries (and it wasn't very easy to find).

Hopefully it will work for this user and Xara will catch this issue by including the necessary code in the final version, providing an auto-download like they apparently do for GDI+ and MSXML4, updating the link in their error message, updating the knowledgebase, or all of the above.

[Charles Moir]

My support people tell me this morning that they had replied three times to ticket, but it looks as if the email address is wrong, or something is stopping it getting through. They're trying again.

[MerryOtter]

My support people tell me this morning that they had replied three times to ticket, but it looks as if the email address is wrong, or something is stopping it getting through. They're trying again.

And what was their solution?