Dale, Help! My Z Reading broke and I can't get it back

[brucef2112]

Dale,
Some how my Z reading was reset to zero sometime during a sunny day here in Florida on 9-17-06.

At the end of each day I print the Z report and then close the register.
When I closed the register on 9-16 the Z report showed 1 million dollars, OK..., it was more like 45 thousand and something dollars. And Voids and Returns were several hundred dollars each.
When I closed out at the end of day on 9-17 the Z report showed $120.36 dollars. (Voids and Returns were also zeroed).
Based on the end of day jurnal report and the Z reading for the 17th, it seems that after my 3rd transaction for the 17th the Z Reading reset to Zero and then tally the rest of the day as the $120.36 that is showed on the Z report at the end of the day.

I'm running Win2000 on the box with NTFS. I have the latest DHPOS version "C".

If I remember I think the computer locked up, and needed a repoot.
Is it possible that after the shutdown that Win2000 was commanded by Bill Gates to "Fixed" something for me on restart and hosed my Z reading?

I've had it lockup before and restarted without any problems. This time though, I can't recall if I was in the middle of a transaction or not when it happened. Could this have killed the Z reading or is there some bigger sinister plot by somebody?

Got another question;
I have employees who can't see the windows start bar to see there is already an instance of DHPOS running. Or they are drawn to the DHPOS shortcut on the desktop like flies to something. I've come in the next morning to see that there are 2 or 3 instances of DHPOS running. This is not on a network so I'll assume they were only working a single transaction on a single instance at one time. My concern is with the data being corrupt. Is there open files that may get hosed by another instance of the program being open? (note: this was not the case when the Z reading went south.)

thanks a bunch,
bruce.

[IAN]

i dont know but my guess is that a transaction is only added to the z report when you have compleated the sale and ready for the next!

multiple opening would still send data to the same folder, i dont know if it opens reads data adds to the total then closes so it probly dont matter if you have 2 or more???

allthough i do know! if you make a shortcut to the epos software go to propitues in the tabs somewhere you can make that fullscreen then if you add that to the startup or run in the registray then it will open by itself! also if you stop explorer opening you cant see no icons etc etc so nobody can click anything but you can ctrl+alt+del then go to taskmanager go file open then type explorer to start viewing the icons and be able to open local drives etc.

you can also shutdown/restart from the ctrl+alt+del prompt

to exit and to get into a full screen for a dos prompt you can press alt+enter or what ever you call it eg CR/LF/return

i hope this has given you a little info and hope fully someone can confirm or put me straight on the answers i dont fully understand!

[daleadmin]

brucef2112,

The "Z" reading is kept in a file located somewhere on your computer. The only way that it can be reset is if the file is erasesd. This means that at some point Windows 2000 decided to write over the location of this file for some unknown reason, however "stupiditiy" comes to mind.

When the POS program tries to locate this file, but it does not exsist, the POS program will create it starting with the totals all set to zeros. since it is working now that is what has happened. Because the file was lost and now has been recreated there is no way to retrieve the old values for the "Z" reading.

If you start multiple copies of the POS program to access the same register files, and the register files are not networked, then the additional copies of the POS program should either crash or lock-up because they will be trying to access the same data files at the same time and those files have not been set to be SHARED.

The best way to keep multiple copies of the program from running are to always run DHPOS full screen so that the desktop cannot be seen so the icon cannot be clicked. You can also set Windows to automatically launch DHPOS when the computer first starts and then you will not have to put the DHPOS icon on the desk top at all.