After installing the Wine package from the project's site it was missing any config files and the .wine folder.
So after little searching i found a command wineprefixcreate and it seemed to do the job. Then following the instructions of the tutorial in the wine webpage I downloaded a config file from one of the html source browsers. I've edited it manually according to my preferences (windows directory, c:\ directory...)
Then I tried to launch notepad with the command winelauncher notepad.exe. Everything was OK but when I tried to open a file it gives me gray dialog box without any dirs for browsing so I can't open any file. The same is when I try to save a file. In the xterm it returns the error cannot create directory c:\windows\Desktop.
I found that this directory exists so I renamed it and the error seemed to be fixed. However this works only if i am root, otherwise it always says that it is unable to create C:\windows\Desktop.
Also even as root it allows you to browse the directories but you can't open a selected file and you can't save a file. I tried other programs but they don't work properly because Wine don't allow them to read or write on the disk. Also after an attempt to write on disk it is doing something very incorrect and then i can't execute any command and can't even reboot the computer because no commands or files are recognised.
The documentation doesn't help me. I wonder if anyone has experienced this problem. I can post my config and registry files if it can be helpful

This is not so much a slackware installation question as a general linux question. . . So I've moved it to linux general, and I highly reccomend you have a look at Franks Corner, thats where I go first when I'm hunting down a wine bug

On my installation, notepad works perfectly, but I'm having a similar problem to yours with both WinMX and eMule when I try to change the incoming directories. The problem seems to be related to permissions but so far I haven't been able to get any further.

I'm using wine (20040408) on SUSE9.0.

My suggestion for you would be to review the installation steps and re-do them in case you misread something. I used the instructions I found on www.emule-project.net for installing eMule with wine, but most of it applies to any installation.

In general the steps are
1. (root) remove pre-existing wine installation that came with your disto
2. (root) download latest wine rpm for disto and install
3. (root) download and install winesetuptk
4. change to user
5. (user) run winesetuptk
6. (user) in console run: wine notepad

Good luck

Thank you, I'll download WineSetupTk but i think that it's only available as rpm and Slackware uses .tgz packages. I'll try with rpm2tgz. Do you think this will do the job ?

OK i downloaded the rpm and converted it using rpm2tgz. Installed with installpkg then and worked excellent. After the setup finished i tried to run notepad and it returns the error:

Invalid path L"C:\\Windows" for L"windows" directory: does not exist.
Perhaps you have not properly edited your Wine configuration file (/home/izvi/.wine/config)
Wine failed with return code 1

I'm sure the directory exists and the path is OK. There is no go for me!

Here is a snippet from my config file:
[Drive C]
"Path" = "/home/peter/.wine/fake_windows"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "/home/peter/.wine/fake_windows"
"Filesystem" = "win95"

If I edit the "Path" line to have an invalid path, as below (xxxpeter instead of peter)
"Path" = "/home/xxxpeter/.wine/fake_windows"

then I get the exact same error as you are getting, so verify!! Oh, and I read somewhere that the use of %HOME% notation although valid as per document doesn't always work, so write out the path as it should be.

Let's see what happens...

Here is a part of my config file. I'm sure the paths for C and for Windows are correct. Don't know about the other but the error says my Windows dir does not exist and it's not true. It seems that nobody has ever experienced this problem. Very strange. Please have a look on my config file and tell me if anything is incorrect. Thank you.

[Drive A]
"Path" = "/mnt/floppy"
"Type" = "floppy"
"Label" = "Floppy"
"Device" = "/dev/fd0"

[Drive B]
"Path" = "/"
"Type" = "floppy"
"Label" = "Floppy"
"Device" = "/dev/fd2"

[Drive C]
"Path" = "/home/izvi/.wine/fake_windows"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "/home/izvi/.wine/fake_windows"
"Filesystem" = "win95"

[Drive D]
"Path" = "/mnt/cdrom"
"Type" = "cdrom"
"Label" = "/mnt/cdrom"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
"Device" = "/dev/scd0"

[Drive X]
"Path" = "/tmp"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "Tmp Drive"
"Filesystem" = "win95"

[Drive Y]
"Path" = "%HOME%"
"Type" = "network"
"Label" = "Home"
"Filesystem" = "win95"

[Drive Z]
"Path" = "/"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "Root"
"Filesystem" = "win95"

[wine]
"Windows" = "C:\\Windows"
"System" = "C:\\Windows\\System"
"Temp" = "X:\\"
"Path" = "C:\\Windows;C:\\Windows\\System;X:\\;X:\\test;Y:\\"
"GraphicsDriver" = "x11drv"
; Wine doesn't pass directory symlinks to Windows programs by default.
; Enabling this may crash some programs that do recursive lookups of a whole
; subdir tree in case of a symlink pointing back to itself.
;"ShowDirSymlinks" = "1"
;"ShowDotFiles" = "1"
"ShellLinker" = "wineshelllink"

Your config looks ok.

The other way I can reproduce your error is by taking away write permission from my fake_windows directory.

Can you check to make sure that fake_windows and also the subs and files within have write permission?

-t

The permissions are set as follows for all dirs:

read by owner "yes"
write by owner "yes"
execute/search by owner "yes"
read by group "yes"
write by group "no"
execute/search by group "no"
read by others "yes"
write by others "no"
execute/search by others "yes"

I think this should be ok. However if i use a shorter path for my C: drive (such as "/home/izvi/win" it is able to recognise my Windows directory but nothing can make it to read or write anywhere, so all Windows programs are crashing. It displays empty directories or gray surface but not the files.is there any chance to use my Windows programs with this ? I was thinking about using the Windows filesystem but it seems unsafe even for Linux and actually it can't do anything but troubles.

I've been playing with different combinations of things to try and reproduce your error but without any luck. I noticed that even if you comment out the "path" line everything will work the same.

The only other idea I have is to check your dosdirectories directory, in case your "c" link is pointing to somewhere wrong. If you delete the directory (or rename it) then when you start wine the next time it will be recreated.

Try that...

It doesn't helped. Also this error appear only when i try to start Wine as normal user. However as root it doesn't output any errors but it can't deal with any disk read or write operations.

Can anyone suggest what to do? I asked in some other places but nobody can help me with this. You here are very large community and i hope you can help me and it will be great. I believe it is something simple but I don't know where to start.

There is a new version of wine which has quite a few bug fixes. The problems I was having are all gone now

Don't forget to disinstall any current/previous versions before installing as root.

Don't forget to change users before running wine to test

let me know if it works

cheers,
t.

But there isnt a binary package for Slackware (the latest for Slack is 20040408 and I already have it). Should I wait for it or should I convert a rpm for other distro to tgz?

I imagine you can find the instructions for compiling for Slackware somewhere but it's probably much easier to wait for it to be released.

On the other hand, you might consider changing your disto... I'm using SUSE 9.0 which has a nice automatic update feature and works well with my wlan (with other distos I couldn't get it to work)...

Good luck!