Q: On a Windows 98 peer-to-peer network, the system sometimes hangs, or crashes, especially when more than one instance of The Jewellery Shopkeeper is opened on one computer.  How can I fix it?

A: All multi-user operations of The Jewellery Shopkeeper normally work well under Windows.  But problems have been experienced on some of the latest, fast, computers.  The following installation changes have been found to cure the symptoms:

1. Use IPX/SPX protocol instead of NETBEUI.  This change alone has cured the problem.  If this change is not possible, then just use 2. and 3. below.
2. Give each user his own copy of the program itself - that is two files, JSK.EXE and XMENU.OVL - by copying these files to each computer's C-drive \WINDOWS directory and then deleting the two files from the shared \JEWEL directory.  It is important that the same build of the file pair is copied to the sam directory, otherwise fatal runtime error 1201 or 1204 will result.  Remove the program path from the short-cut program command line, or change it to match the new, local, path.
3. Set the temporary drive letter (in The Jewellery Shopkeeper, System constants) of network users to a local drive.  Normally less than 100KB is required and so a RAM drive could be used.  If you wish to use the C-drive, make a directory called JSK_temp and put the command  SUBST T: C:\JSK_temp in the autoexec.bat file.   Then set the temporary drive letter to T.  (Note: changing the drive letter changes all users using that profile.  The user profile is selected as a parameter in the program execution command, e.g. JSK.EXE 2.  User profiles 4 to 9 are Point-of-Sale users.)
4. More clever users may be able to fix the problem by adding file buffers or something.  Let me know if I am missing the easy solution!  But, if nothing else, the above steps 1 and 2 will reduce network traffic and thus speed up the (already fast) program.

Q: How can I check the cash in each cash drawer separately?

A: Let each till point user a different user profile.  Six POS profiles are available (4 - 9).  The Tally program asks for the till (user profile) number and for the float that was there to start with.  The report, (Sales, Reports, Trans., Payments) also has a user profile filter.  The same user profiles can be used for till numbers at another shop/branch without interference, since the branch code is also filtered by the reports.   NOTE: The banking deposit will deposit all the money (less the float) for the shop/branch with the user profile having no effect.

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