EVERY time I open Windows (version 3.1), a box pops out with the message 'Error. Cannot find DIALOG.FON'. After double-clicking on CLOSE, Windows starts normally. I can find no DIALOG.FON files anywhere. How do I eliminate this inconvenience? TONY WONG Lai Chi Kok This error could be caused by a couple of problems. You will have to go through a process of elimination to find the cause and fix it. First, double check if the pop-up error message tells you the name of the application that cannot find DIALOG.FON. If so, reinstall that application. If not, read on. Windows itself could be looking for the file in question on startup, a font file, perhaps, in your case. When you install a new font, a line with the .FON extension (in the case of non-TrueType and non-PostScript files) and its related file is written into your WIN.INI file under 'fonts'. If you, at some point, deleted the DIALOG.FON file from your system but did not remove the matching line from WIN.INI, Windows will not be able to find the file every time it starts up and runs through WIN.INI. Run SYSEDIT using the RUN command in Program Manager's File pull-down menu. Go into WIN.INI, search for the DIALOG.FON line, delete it and restart Windows. If the problem persists, it means one of your Windows applications, rather than Windows itself, is looking for the DIALOG.FON file on startup but cannot find it. Go to your Windows Start Up folder and delete the application icons in it. Then run SYSEDIT again, go into WIN.INI and go to the lines starting with LOAD= and RUN=. These lines contain the details of programs that Windows will run on start-up. Comment out (this is the same as removing them) these lines by adding a semicolon before the LOAD and RUN lines. Then type in a new LOAD= and RUN= line, add the program descriptions from the old lines to the news ones one by one and restart Windows after each addition. If the problem lies with one of these applications, you will get the error message after you have just added its name to the new LOAD and RUN lines. Once you have identified the application, reinstall it, or at least the DIALOG.FON file from it. WHEN I double-click on Windows' File Manager, I receive the following message on screen: 'APPLICATION ERROR: WINFILE caused a General Protection Fault in module KRNL386.EXE at 0001.14DC'. I cannot open File Manager. How can I solve this? SURYAMAN RAI Sek Kong The most likely scenario is that your Windows KRNL386.EXE file has been corrupted by a disk error or a virus. Replace the file from your original Windows disks and run a virus check on your system. If that fails, the file could be conflicting with another application running. A general protection fault can be caused when two applications running simultaneously try to grab the same chunk of system memory. Get rid of all Windows start-up applications by following the steps described in the answer to the above question (in relation to WIN.INI's LOAD= and RUN= lines) and restart Windows. If you can now run File Manager, add back the removed programs (once again, look to the above answer for the method) one-by-one until you find the problem application. If you still cannot find the problem application, it could be one that runs in DOS as a TSR (terminate and stay resident) program. Go to DOS and edit your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT and remove all files but the standard ones (such as EMM386.EXE, HIMEM.EXE, SMARTDRV.EXE and MOUSE.EXE) by placing a REM before them. Once you go through all this system detective work and find the problem application, you may have to remove it from your system.
