TaxAct, wine 20031212

[Duane Clark]

James E. LaBarre wrote:
> ...
> I have suspected this problem stems from the app attempting to create 
> it's default data file, which for some stupid reason has imbedded spaces 
> in the name.  I  have attempted to get debug data from it, but have 
> never gotten an answer on *WHAT* data I need to capture...

So, you sure you want to know that?

The general process I use is something like this. First set the "Debug" 
section in your ~/.wine/config file to look like:
[Debug]
"RelayExclude" = 
"RtlEnterCriticalSection;RtlLeaveCriticalSection;_EnterSysLevel;_LeaveSysLevel;LOCAL_Lock;LOCAL_Unlock;TlsGetValue;kernel32.GetLastError;kernel32.SetLastError"

The stuff after the Debug header should be one long line.

Then create a temporary directory, cd into it, and type (assuming you 
are using the bash shell) something like:
wine --debugmsg +relay,+file -- /c/Program\ 
Files/TaxACT2003/TaxAct03.exe &> wine.log

Again that is one long line. That will generate a large file, probably 
40 or 50MB. It also makes the program run a lot slower, so give it time.

Now make it more manageable:
split -b 2m wine.log

That splits the big file up into a bunch of 2MB files.

Now start looking for things. For example:
grep file x*
Oops, there are a lot of extraneous lines containing "Profile", that we 
are not interested in.
grep file x* | grep -v Profile
Hmm, we don't care about DLLs or dlls.
grep file x* | grep -v Profile | grep -v DLL | grep -v dll

Now look through the lines and see what files it is trying to open, and 
see if they exist.

Another thing to try is to look for the first time the error message 
shows up:
grep empty x*

You can then open the indicated file, and work backwards to see if you 
can figure out what might have caused the error. Go ahead and give it a 
try. Yes, it looks like gibberish at first, but eventually some of it 
will start to make sense. Basically, you are trying to figure out where 
the program failed, which is a long way toward figuring out why it failed.