very simple problem

I have been running into a problem since a night or 2 ago that's really getting to me (you wouldn't believe). I have been to various message boards, searched tutorials, etc, etc for a solution to my problem. I was doing something in a program, that was working just fine (last year lol), and now I cannot figure it out for the life of me. Any help, would be much appreciated(I can't say that enough...eesh).

http://www25.brinkster.com/votech/problem.html
It's all explained here

After you've checked it out, you could assume that it'd work with just any old dos program. What i'm trying to do(simply put) is CREATE a whole new program to RUN another program. If the program that's being ran by MY program, runs into an error during the startup proccess and closes, I want my program to catch that and know if it does.

That's why.......

if error = printf("there was an error!");

if no error = // do nothing

That's also why I used NUL to surpress any output from the dos program that is being ran by my program. The dos, command line program, THIS PROJECT will be surrounding, can kick out some pretty long file name list's, and I want to keep the error output message's small and simple.

If another type of error were to happen with this external program that's being executed by my program, i'd be in trouble right? That's why I am ensuring this is the only error I'll run into ( loading files ).

Bad command or file name.