Re: informix Personal edition. installation questions!! pls. help, anyone.

During the startup of your installing application check for the proper networking setup by looking at the registry, if the keys are there continue your installation if the keys are not there give the abort the installation and have the customer install the networking software from the windows CD with Microsoft assisting, make the customer aware that the networking software is from Microsoft and that for support they should call Microsoft. Provide the Microsoft's support number and provide a detailed list of exactly what components your software requires. One of your stated requirements should be that the computer has the networking software installed, if it is not installed it should not be your job to install it. Yes, I know the pain of "We must provide" from the marketing people but if you don't draw the line then your support costs eats your profit and believe me, once you have taken the responsibility of installing MS Networking your customer will call you for support on MS issues. Dennis Fantoni wrote in message <35e7fa91.0@news4.image.dk>... >Have anyone tried to create an *automated* install procedure for a program, >utilizing personal edition, that installs on NT and Windows 95 with and >without network adaptors , modems and network?. > >If anyone have succeeded in this, please reply how you did it. > >We have implemented solutions to most of our problems, but one biggo problem >remains : > >Unsolved Problem : > > >1) personal edition crashes when started up on a W95, if W95 has been >installed out of the box, with no network, no modem. (no nice dialog telling >you what to do, only some panic, then a gpf / illegal instruction or a >freeze). > >To fix 1, our install program must detect if pe will run on the particular >w95 installation (what should we test for - and how), and if it will not, >we have to install whatever is needed, without having to ask the user for >his windows95 cd. (what to install - and how). Our program resides on a CD >so we have elbow room for files to include, but what and how is the >questions of the day... > > >suggestions : > >dennis@teamnetwork.dk > > > > >Solved problems : (thanks to super-excellent support at informix Denmark) > >1) GLS not on personal edition CD, so personal edition CD cannot be used >outside USA/England without installing additional files. Setenv.cmd(nt) or >setenv.bat(win95) must be patched to local setting by our install program, >after the informix install program has been called. > >2) The install program must create a user for the personal edition to use. >On NT we've done that from a dll called by installshield. We create the user >using NT user system. (not more than 11-12 characters, though. or PE will >get into trouble). > >3) W95 has no user system, so personal edition has implemented it's own. >Only, it is not possible programatically to create a user in the personal >edtion user system. (Informix Denmark actually created for us, a .exe file >that does the trick - that is what i call good customer support). > >4) The database on windows 95 would ask you to log in when it was started. >(fixed by another program, created for the task & supplied by informix >Denmark). > >All in all. If You plan to use personal edition for widespread distribution >as an embedded database, to be installed by people not used to fiddling with >windows installation in general, prepare for 14 days of work to get the darn >thing running across various windows 95 and NT configurations. > >Btw. the current personal edition is the one that in a insert trigger on >atable, cannot alter any data in the row being inserted into atable. Can't >locate and search in strings in database case insensitive, seems to be >vulnerable to a sudden power off, crashes on corrupt database files, no >warning. (delete * from smalltable.. hang..), makes your program use quite >a lot of diskspace (tens of MB on client). Hmm. And makes You have to work >in the week-end. > >If it wasn't for the outstanding support i've been getting from Informix >Denmark, it had been out the window days ago, and i've had been working with >sql anywhere or interbase local. > > >Please, please please, help me with my only remaining problem (install on >W95), so we can get those CD's out to our customers, and so our program can >run blazingly fast with a real sql engine below the hood. If informix PC >products matched their support, they would be the database leader. > >All the above is my opinion alone, and has nothing to do with my emloyer. >I'm writing here in my spare time, while trying to figure out what to do. > >Dennis > >