Howdy Anatoly,

Finally got around to reinstalling "Windows XP Mode - Windows Virtual PC" (Windows XP Pro version 2002 SP 3) on my new Windows 7 Pro SP1 system.

From within the Windows XP Mode system, I installed PSM 9.34g. I then copied my portfolio file from the Win 7 system to the XP Mode system and opened it up in PSM. Also copied my script extensions from the Win 7 system and installed them in PSM.

The first thing I noticed was a difference in the Active Securities display font, which has jagged angled lines (such as "y") compared to smooth angled lines in the Win 7 system. The second thing I noticed is that the tooltip popups do not flicker, like they do on the Win 7 system. Both of these are most likely due to the fact that the Win XP Mode system uses an S3 virtual display driver. Whereas my Win 7 system uses the full ATI package of drivers (latest version) for the installed card.

Then I ran some tests . . .

Test 1: Ran a script I wrote that goes online and obtains data from a web page for some custom columns in PSM.

Results: The script ran fine, whereas it produces a PSM Critical Error crash on my Win 7 system, even when psm.exe is set to Win XP Compatibility Mode (either SP 2 or SP 3).


Test 2: Scroll the Active Securities display to show columns that are off the right side of the display, and attempt to move a column by clicking the column heading and dragging it to a new position.

Results: Success , just as it worked on my old Win XP system. This does not work properly in the Win 7 system, as noted in a prior post.


Test 3: Scroll the Active Securities display to show columns that are off the right side of the display, and click in a custom column to edit the data.

Results: Success, just as it worked on my old Win XP system. This does not work properly in the Win 7 system, as noted in a prior post.


Test 4: Open a chart window that contains one or more angled annotation lines that continue off-screen (ie. a 5-yr trend line but the screen is only displaying 1-yr data). Then click the "Redraw the chart" button, to update the lower chart display (ie. volume axis values), before doing anything else in the window.

Result: Same as in the Win 7 system -- the annotation lines become offset from their original position by some number of pixels. However, this does not happen on every chart.


Test 5: Open a chart window and select Chart Type = Line.
Result: Same as in the Win 7 system -- the right edge of the upper chart display is off by one day. The current day data is not displayed, even though the lower chart does contain the current day data. This does not happen when the Chart Type = Candle or OHLC.

Next, to see if some of these problems might be caused by the large portfolio file I use, along with 1200+ Intraday and End-Of-Day files, many alerts, lots of text in each tickers Notes box, etc. . . . I created a backup file of my Win 7 portfolio, including historical price data, copied it to the Win XP Mode system, and opened it in PSM, answering No to the question about importing historical price data. Then, I re-ran the above 5 tests. All results were the same.

Next, I copied the individual 2400+ historical price data files (intraday and end-of-day) into the Win XP Mode system.

Test 6: Import Historical price data into database -- Options/Preferences/Historical Data, click the "Import history data files into database" button.

Results: The import process completed without error, unlike in the Win 7 system. A File/Save function performed immediately after the import function also completed without error, unlike in the Win 7 system.

Next, I re-ran tests 1-5 and all the results were the same.


In Summary:
* Scripts that run fine in Windows XP cause Critical Error crashes in my Win 7 system (Test 1).

* Clicking and/or dragging a column name, or attempting to edit data in a custom column, that is off-screen to the right (after scrolling the screen), does not work in my Win 7 system, but works fine in Win XP Mode (Tests 2 and 3).

* Chart window problems in my Win 7 system are also problems in Win XP Mode (Tests 4 and 5).

* Importing historical data to the database works fine in Win XP Mode but does not in my Win 7 system (Test 6).

Do I want to start the Microsoft Virtual Machine every time I want to run PSM, in order to have run it in Windows XP Mode? No, for many reasons. I much prefer having PSM run properly in Windows 7, just as it did on my previous Windows XP system, and like it does in Windows XP Mode.

I hope these tests prove useful in your debugging efforts.

Cheers,

-Don