1

Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Any news of an upgrade to the installation tools to cope with Windows 7?

We now have two W7 machines on our network and it is likely (nay certain) that all further machine upgrades will also be the new OS. I have overseen the workstation install on both and while it was fairly straightforward to clear up the various registry prolems which ensued, it was tedious and I would not expect most of our other staff here to be able to cope with it.

Obviously the copy of workstationsetup.exe on our system is now rather dated, since we first installed a number of years ago. Are there any plans to release a new version and would this be done as part of a routine upgrade?

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

2

Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

I think that Workstationsetup.exe which comes with V6.17 will work with Window 7. What I am unsure about and am trying to check out is whether or not upgrading to 6.17 automatically replaces worksstationsetup.exe with the latest version. If it doesn't then we need to provide further information on this.

Mike Weideli

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Well we have upgraded to 6.17 and I can assure you that it doesn't work properly Mike (or at least it didn't either of the two times I have done it), which suggests that the executable wasn't updated.

Thanks

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

I need to do some investigation on this. Could you check your file installsettings.ini and see if the format is something along these lines. It should be in the R6  installation folder.

SiteID=LC000385
Database Name=NBNData
Server Name=VOSTRO340\DEL2005DEV
Trusted Security=1

Please could you also check for me via properties the version of  WorkStationSetup.exe that is currently on your server.

Mike Weideli

5

Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

The ini file has the same format although all values except Database name are different.

The exe is version 6.13.2.176

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Hi Mike,
Just in case it helps, we ran the network upgrade to 6.17 on Windows 7 and Windows XP machines with no problems outside the Help issue (which we have solved on all but one  Win7 machine)

Our WorkstationSetup.exe file is version 6.14.4.212

Our InstallSettings.ini file reads:

SiteID=
Database Name=NBNData
Server Name=UMCEDAR
Trusted Security=0

I've no idea why our SiteID is blank. It's certainly there in Recorder when we use it.

Hope this helps,
Fiona and Pauline

Fiona McCrory
CEDaR Website Officer
www.nmni.com/cedar

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

This looks like it is going to be tricky to find a solution.  Each version of the WorkStationInstallation program and files are specific to the version of Recorder they are shipped with so there is no guarantee that the latest version will work with earlier installations. 

We think it might be worth a try though if anyone is willing to give it a go. . The latest files are available for download at

www.Recorder6.Info/WorkStationUpgradeExperimental.zip

The three files should be used to replace those in the Recorder 6 folder. Make sure though that the original files are backed up  so that they can be restored if required.  The workstation installation should then be run in the normal way.

Mike Weideli

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

At the moemtn we don't have a machine with Windows 7 that needs the workstation installing. If one turns up I will give it a go.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Thanks. We definitely need some help with this one. Thanks also to Tony for pointing out the error in the link, which has now been fixed.

Mike Weideli

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Mike,

I have just used your new WorkstationSetup and it appears to have worked perfectly - well Recorder is now running without any errors so far (fingers-crossed) - it didn't install with the original setup we had which was 2008 vintage

Craig

Craig Slawson
Staffordshire Ecological Record

11 (edited by RobLarge 04-02-2013 14:34:43)

Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Just an update.

We have just added another new Windows 7 machine to our network. Our ITC wasn't aware of this thread & went ahead using the old Workstationsetup.exe. Needless to say the installation exhibited the usual problems.

In our case these are in two areas. Firstly a new installation will not open because of an incorrect Object Sheet file path (for some reason the installer always selects Z:/User Files/Oject sheet/ when it should be Z:/Object Sheet/). This is easily corrected by editing the registry setting). However the installation still doesn't recognise any addins apart from the Display unchecked and Standard validation.

I subsequently informed the ITC of Mike's experimental solution above and he reinstalled (without uninstalling first), after which the problems still existed. More precisely the Object sheet issue, which I had fixed previously, was broken again and there were no  visible addins at all.

I then ran John's registry checker (not sure which version, but probably an old one) which identified the problems as well as a couple of other invalid file paths. John's Attempt fixes button appeared to work on the invalid paths, but had no visible effect on the addin issue.

Fortunately I have a registry patch which registers the various classes needed for W7 and after running it the installation now seems fine. However I am none the wiser as to whether the experimental solution would perform correctly on a clean install.

I would be interested to know why the installer consistently picks up the wrong path for the Object Sheet. Is it getting this setting from our system somewhere (in which case we ought to be able to alter the setting on our server) or is it coded into the installer? Another intriguing clue is that our ITC had to re-map the file server (because Z: was not available on his login), after running the installer most of the file paths ettings had correctly picked up the change and listed filepaths begining with W:\, but the incorrect ones (including the Object sheet path) still began with Z:\.

The mystery deepens.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

12

Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Another update. Yesterday I was called to look at the machine I referred to in the last post. Recorder had stopped working altogether, It was failing at the point of login so wouldn't start at all.

Inspection of the error messages showed that the addins weren't loading at a very early stage and it turned out that I hadn't fully fixed the problem. The settings folder in the registry is, of course in HKEY_CURRENT_USER and I hadn't fixed for the main user of the machine. Specifically the Addins folder path was still pointing at the W: drive and the addin installer dll was not registered.

Initially I suspected that the problem lay with the fact that the ITC hadn't uninstalled the previous, defective workstation installation prior to using the experimental install, so I uninstalled and reinstalled using it. This resulted in an installation which would allow login, but still had no addins apart from the basic ones. Johns checker also identified and fixed a couple of minor faults and I was able to reinstall the addins, so it now seems alright.

The upshot of this is that I do not think that the experimental installer is able to deal properly with our network installation, which has been in place for several years (I can't remember which version we started on, but I remember the initial installation wasn't without problems).

Since it is reasonable to expect that all future workstations will be W7 at least, I have come to the conclusion that sometime in the near future we will have to completely remove R6 from our network and reinstall using a modern version, before putting the data back from a backup. Not really looking forward to this, but since I seem to be the only person here who can fix these sort of problems, prudence suggests we need a permanent fix.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

By the way. If I do attempt the complete removal, is there any easy way I can check the registries of the workstations (and especially the server) to make sure all previous keys have been removed?

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

I suggest you try replacing the workstation install files on the server with those from 6.17, as recommended in http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?pid=16431#p16431 , and do your workstation installs with those before trying uninstalling and reinstalling your whole Recorder 6 system.

Recorder uninstalls are much cleaner than they used to be so you shouldn’t need to clear out the registry entries but to double check, the Recorder 6 entries in the following nodes should not be present on a workstation after an uninstall:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Dorset Software and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Dorset Software or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Dorset Software on Windows 7 64-bit machines.
There are no registry entries on the server unless it also doubles as a workstation.

Sally Rankin, JNCC Recorder Approved Expert
E-mail: s.rankin@btinternet.com
Telephone: 01491 578633
Mobile: 07941 207687

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Sally that is what I have just done, as you will see from what I have posted above, it has not worked.

Thansk for the list of keys I will check next time I do one.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Workstation setup Windows 7

Another update.

I just replaced my own workstation (running XP) with a new one with W7. I think this was the first time I have done a clean workstation install on W7 (rather than trying to fix someone else's bodged attempt) and I had the luxury of taking my time to chase down all the issues.

I am happy to report, that using the 6.17 workstationsetup.exe and ensuring that I ran it as administrator, the process went smoothly and seems to have created a fully operational setup first time. Hooray.

If only I could say the same for some of the other things I installed yesterday.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre