Question:
I'm
having trouble installing PD Pro 3.2 or the 3.5 update patch. I think I
successfully downloaded the file, and unzipped (extracted) it from the
zip file if applicable. When I double-click to run the executable
installer file, a first phase seems to extract many files into a temp
folder. The progress bar goes through to the end, and at that point it
doesn't install Dogwaffle. Instead, it starts the dialog window for
installation of another product (audio drivers, printer./scanner,
mpeg/dvd,... you name it)
What can I do?
Answer:
In some rare cases such problem of botched
installation can be fixed by cleaning out the content of the Temp
folder. Somehow, our installer's SETUP.EXE file wasn't installed or
wasn't found and thus failed to execute.
The installation involves two phases:
- phase 1extracts a bunch of files, including one
called SETUP.EXE, and they all go into a Temp folder;
- phase 2 runs the SETUP.EXE file, now expected to be
found in the Temp folder along with the many other extracted files.
There is a quick way to cleanup the files and subfolders found in the
Temp folder:
- you open 'My Computer' and
- right-click on the C: drive,
- then select 'Properties'.
- In the main tab you'll see a Disk Cleanup button. Click it. One of
the things this does it clean out the Temp
folder. Click OK and confirm you want to proceed with the cleanup.
If you have never done this and the computer is a few years old, this
may just have found you a few gigabytes of disk space ;-)
On Windows XP, each user has his/her own Temp folder, in addition to
there beinga system Temp folder. The temp folder that needs perhaps to
be cleaned out is the user-specific Temp folder. It can be found in
C:\Documents and Settings
under the folder of your login username, in a subfolder named
'Local Settings'
If you already have an old Setup.exe file in that Temp folder, and if
such Setup.exe file is locked or otherwise prevented from being
replaced by our installer's attempt to put itself there during the
first phase of the installation (the self-extraction phase), then that
could cause the second phase to fail, because our installer attempts to
run the file named SETUP.EXE which it things was copied into the
Temp folder like the other 300 or so files from our installer's
self-extraction. Instead of our Setup file, the old Setup file is
run.
Another thing that can happen is that your environment variable called
'Path' is corrupted in a way that it ends up looking for executable
files in other folders first, before the current folder. Some software
installations have the bad habit of prepoending their folders to the
Path, and if a Setup.exe file is left in that prepended folder location
then this can prevent future setup.exe executions from running
successfully because the prior, older setup.exe file may be found and
executed instead.
These are the scenarios we're aware of which can make unexpected
and strange things happen, such as
- (re)installing an Mpeg2/DVD driver
- (re)installing a soundcard driver
- (re)installing a printer or scanner driver
etc etc... in most or almost all of these cases, an
old setup.exe was executed instead of ours - either because ours wasn't
allowed to get into the Temp folder, or because despite it being placed
there successfully, your PC's Path variable didn't make it possible for
our Setup.exe to actually be found and executed - a different setup.exe
in a different folder was invoked instead.
To check on your PATH or Path variables, use the Control Panel, open
the 'System' panel, view the 'Advanced' tab and find the 'Environment
Variables' button.
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Project
Dogwaffle & PD Pro:
