I am currently using Metastock 7.2 on a system with Windows XP.  I haven't upgraded because the newer versions don't open my layouts correctly.

When I click "Open" on the Downloader, the Downloader program crashes completely, no error message or anything.  Here are the things I have tried:

-Uninstalled and reinstalled metastock and the downloader.
-Used the Control-Shift trick to delete all of the settings in metastock and the downlaoder.
-Deleted all of the data folders where I opened data from before.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing this?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

We have been receiving an increased amount of queries regarding problems with MetaStock and The DownLoader, after installing Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Versions 8.0 and newer are XP compliant, and are not experiencing these issues. The problems have been with versions 7.22 and earlier (6.52 – 7.22), which were released before Windows XP and therefore are not XP compliant. The recommended solution is to upgrade to our current version, which is XP compliant. There is a work-around to help resolve most of the issues, however it will not resolve all of them, so we recommend upgrading to the current version.

The work-around is as follows (versions 6.52 – 7.22):

Right click on the MetaStock shortcut
Select Properties
Select the Compatibility tab
Select the option to “Run this program in Compatibility mode for” and select Windows 98/Me from the list
Click OK

Right click on The DownLoader shortcut
Select Properties
Select the Compatibility tab
Select the option to “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and select Windows 98/Me from the list
Click OK

Please note that you will want to uncheck this Compatibility option prior to upgrading to an XP compliant version of MetaStock and/or The DownLoader.