Christianb

Hi BladeRunner, Well it sounds like I learne something new about the SCSI interface, but I am still not sure I agree that IOmega isn't still at fault. What you are describing sounds like a heterogenous chain issue, but even if you had a dedicated external chain there can only be one device on it, the Zip Minus, so no SCSI scanners, printers, or other drives. My Dad was backing up his computer and 10/12 disks failed that was a 200 dollar media problem. Not mention that the drive had the click of death so that adds about another 120 to the issue. Making it a 320 dollar failure. I had an Epson Parrallel zip and aside from being ungodly slow it suffered the click of death too after my dad innocently mailed me a disk from Cali with family photos on it. I was living in WA at the time. Not only that, but Zip disks are low density HD platters and are highly fragile and volitile, because they're magnetic. That's why everyone has switched to optical media, although I will definetly admit that price was the biggest motivator IOmega got greedy. Greed has destroyed more companies than I care to remember. Ever heard of NextOS or OS/2? Who's using them now? Darn near nobody. -Christian

webe123 and philbarnes, Let me see here, while I'm glad that your two product work fine. I don't think personal experience counts for much. When compared to a the large number of lawsuits that have rightfully been brought up against this company in relation to their customer service practices. So do you know their customer service history? Obviously not. Otherwise you wouldn't be speaking in their defense. I know of no other company in the computer hardware industry with such a bad record. Why don't you find some articles, read them, and then tell me how you feel about IOmega Click of Death: Announcing Iomega Class Action The law firm of Dodge, Fazio, Anderson, and Jones, P.C. has announced that a nationwide class action was commenced on September 10, 1998 in the Superior Court of New Castle County in Delaware on behalf of all owners of the Iomega Zip Drive. The complaint contains claims for breach of warranty, negligence in manufacturing and design, consumer fraud, and for failure to warn. Iomega, which is a Delaware corporation, has been selling the Zip Drive (the "Drive") for over three years. A substantial number of Zip Drives have developed a problem commonly known as the “Click of Death,” which renders the Drive useless and damages the disk such that any data on the disk is lost. It appears that the Click of Death can damage an otherwise unaffected Drive by the use of a disk that is already corrupted. I should also mention that it wasn' like only a few users were affected, because out of 250,000 defective drives the disks from those defective drives (which both my dad and I each had) were shared with working drives and infected countless more, perhaps doubling or quadrupling that figure. If you do a search on Google for "Zip Click of death" you'll find 244,000 web pages all complaining about this so you know it's an unquestionably enormous issue. Zip Plus - I don't do SCSI, but I am scsIOmega Compliant. SCSI Devices by their very nature are designed to work on a chain (series of cables, one in and one out) with 7 to 15 other devices (depending on the version of SCSI). The Zip Plus was a great idea, most people at the time it came out wanted SCSI for speed, but if they were going to bring the drive to a friend's house that didn't have SCSI then they also wanted parrallel. The trouble is a Zip Plus is about as SCSI as I am an olympic athelete. The ZIP PLus will only work on a SCSI chain of only one device so it isn't actually SCSI Compliant. Suppose I made an IDE (ATA133 or slower)hard drive that wouldn't work with a slave. That wouldn't really be an IDE drive either, without a disclaimer. There was no disclaimer on the ZIP plus packaging. Nor were there refunds issued for false advertising. Quote: 5/5/98 Iomega ZipPlus incompatibility can corrupt data on your drive From a MacWEEK article: Iomega's ZipPlus drive should only be used with the AutoDetect cable that ships with it. Using other cables can lead to data corruption. For example, this "precludes the drive's use with PowerBooks, which have a special SCSI adapter cable." See what Iomega has to say about this Zip Plus drive [i would include this link, but IO Mega removed their deceitful product announcement, ah to hell with it here's where it used to be Do they really think they can get away with this??? The Zip Plus cannot be used in a SCSI chain with other devices, it cannot be used with any cable converter, gender changers. This rules out its use in any wide or ultra wide SCSI card setup. Iomega's "Customer Service" offered the following "Deal": Iomega will exchange the Zip Plus for an external Zip Drive and 6 Zip disks (to compensate for the extra $100 spent on the Plus). The exchange offer is valid only while the Zip Plus is under warranty. Why should I exchange the Zip Plus for an external SCSI Zip and 6 Zip disks? This Drive is NOT acceptable!!! This is not how this product was advertised, boxed, or sold. This is not why we bought the Zip Plus Drive. Iomega has built a device that does not work correctly, and now seems to think that they can change the manual to fit their screw up. It appeared that Iomega has NO plans to "fix" the Zip Plus hardware or firmware to allow it to be used as a part of a SCSI chain or with pin converters on wide or ultra wide SCSI cards. In my opinion, Iomega should discontinue sale of the Zip Plus Drive, until a time when and if they can build a Zip Plus drive that really works. .ZIP, ZIP Drive, eh what's the difference?: Night and day .ZIP is a file compression format invented by PKWare over 10 years ago, it's also the second most widely used file distribution format shy of self-extracting .exes. For a number of years it was number one. A Zip drive is a poorly designed, defective product, with unstable drivers, no toll free technical support (even though the box said so) and a confusing name. A Zip drive is a removable disk based device and has nothing to do with ZIP compression, nor does it integrate ZIP compression into the design and or original software in any way. I am personally amazed that PKWARE didn't seek fiscal and brand name damages for IOmegas clear theft of the ZIP file name. I wish there was some way to measure how many stupid users bought a zip drive simply because they'd heard good things about zip files and assumed that a ZIP Drive was what their friends were talking about. We Could Have Been Number 1 Lastly the zip drive could have replaced floppy drives as the new storage medium if they'd just charged 40 dollars for the drives and no more than 5 for each disk. Oh well it was bad technology anyhow Viva CD/RWs with Mount Ranier Technology. We don't honor our boxes free Technical Support claims or your Rebate Applicaions Just read it I'm tired of typing Now who knows what they're talking about again? I forget? Of course I'm sure both of you were aware of all of this? I'm sorry I didn't intend for this to an I told you so, but you both really need a big heads up on IOmega the worst company in the computer hardware industry today. -Christian Blackburn

Hi Gang, I'm not sure if it's just for Internet Explorer or if it was for the OS as well, but I do recall coming across a bug feedback form in sort part of Windows or IE. My bug is related to Task Manger in Win2K Sp3 so if the form is only for IE then that would suck. None the less does anyone know what I'm talking about? Where to find it? and if it's just for IE only? Thanks for the help, Christian Blackburn

Hi Gang, I got this in an e-mail and while I already have Norton SystemWorks 2002 Pro I thought some of you guys might be interested. DirectDeals is a legitimate company and I've probably made 4 or 5 separate orders from them over the years. Their shipping is reasonable too it's about 4 dollars. -Christian Same day shipping on most orders placed weekdays before 4pm Eastern time Current Specials It's that time of year again, so we have included a few products that we thought would make great gifts. As always we hope you find what you're looking for. Specials will run through 11/22/02. Please use discount code mailsp to receive these prices. Discount code ---------> mailsp ....Norton SystemWorks 2002 Pro OEM Full Version $12 ....(866)DEALS-11 Toll Free (703)849-8128 Fax. ....DirectDeals.com...

Hi March56, What exactly did you mean. All I see is a quote of what I wrote. Did you have a point or something to add? Thanks, Christian

Hi Gang, I have quick and easy question for someone with Windows 95a, not gold, b, or c, but Windows 95a. Also know as Windows 95 SP1. Please send me the value from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\CurrentVersion in the registry. Thank you one trillion and one to whomever sends me the value. I really appreciate it, Christian Blackburn You'll be helping the InnoSetup Installer which is an open source installer for Win32 that I'm very proud to be a part of.

Well good luck to you on your final release Alec. You know you really ought to buy a domain for your product. For 8.95 at GoDaddy.com you could pick up APKTools.com or something like that and it'd come with free domain forwarding to whatever website you're application's home page is at. Ciao Amigo, Christian

Hi Adam, IMDB is great isn't it? I just wish the photos of all of hollywood's hotties weren't so damn expensive or small, if that were the case I might actually get one. However what I really like about IMDB is that you can say old so and so was in "Life Stinks" and then look it up. Cheers, Christian

Hi BladeRunner, There are tons of articles about the "Click of Death", "Promissed free Technical Support and then charging for it", and creating a SCSI/Parallel device that isn't truly SCSI compliant, because unlike other SCSI devices it must be the only device on the chain instead of working compatibly with 15 other devices like every other SCSI product out there". Aciddenlty, stepping on my parallel port zip drive was the best thing that ever happened to it . Okay actually I wish I still had it for compatiblity reasons, but it'd probably just sit in my closet collecting dust any how. Also their drivers are unstable, and slow down the display of My Computer with their cutesy icons. The zip drive icon could simply be embedded in Explorer.exe, but they're too stupid and possibly afraid of the legal implications of doing so. In fact if you search this messageboard I'm sure you can find information about all of this, because it's come up before. -Christian

Some NIC drivers come with their own indicator lights tray application did you look into that? Sometimes you have to downoad this separately. I think both Intel and 3COM have those available for most of their NICs. -Christian

Hey Adam, I love your quote -Christian

Hi Alec, By the way I didn't write InnoSetup or any part of it. I don't know Delphi so that would make things very difficult. Although it's like VB the syntax is enough different that I wouldn't be able to do it by myself without a considerable learning curve . Although one day I hope to take a class on it, because I've always wanted to know it and now that it finally supports multiple OS's (the two most popular anyways) I really want to know it. Personally I like MacOS better than Linux, but nobody really uses Macs anymore either (I never even owned one, but I used those of friend's , family, work, and school). The WinAMP installer is excellent, possibly better than InnoSetup, but InnoSetup is easier and get's higher ratings. There's also the Ghost Installer which is freeware like the other two. However only one of them won at the shareware 2002 personal choice awards: InnoSetup! I've used a lot of distribution methods self-extractors, VB 5's installer, InstallShield, VB6's Installer, and the Windows Installer and I definetly liked InnoSetup the best. -Christian

About the OCX error handling, I'm not sure about that. I know registration is supported, but it may be supported via the [RUN] section in which case it wouldn't be any different than your batch file in that regards. However you should take a look at the 2.0 help file see if there's anything about it there. Also if you don't find it in the 2.019 help file then you could download v3.05 or ask in the InnoSetup Newsgroup. Good Luck, Christian

Quote: Been looking for a GOOD one... this one looks pretty good, VERY "InstallShield" looking-like, & I always liked their installers! Yes this is InstallShield like except you can probably do more with InstallShield. InstallShield is C based and InnoSetup is Pascal based. There is also a converter for IShield Express to InnoSetup so if you have one of those made you might want to look into it. Also I bet you could reduce your install package size substantially if you run depends on your VB.exe and figure out which of the runtime files your really need, VB is terrible about telling you that. Do you have VS 6 Enterprise I know it comes with depends? -Christian

Ignore.

Ignore.

Hey Alec, Technically speaking you could write a highly elaborate batch file that would capture these values with reg.exe and then variable-ize your batch based installation. InnoSetup to my knowledge detects every last one of these folders from the registry. If 2.0 doesn't then you can be sure it was updated in 3.0. -Christian

Woops! I forgot the user level folders too: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 Code: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders]"AppData"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Application Data""Cookies"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Cookies""Desktop"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Desktop""Favorites"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Favorites""NetHood"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\NetHood""Personal"="D:\\""My Pictures"="D:\\My Pictures""PrintHood"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\PrintHood""Recent"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Recent""SendTo"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\SendTo""Start Menu"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Start Menu""Templates"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Templates""Programs"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Start Menu\\Programs""Startup"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup""Local Settings"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Local Settings""Local AppData"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Local Settings\\Application Data""Cache"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Local Settings\\Temporary Internet Files""History"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Local Settings\\History""Fonts"="C:\\WINNT\\Fonts""Administrative Tools"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Administrative Tools" -Christian

Hi Alec, I am going to have to reply to these one at a time to keep it Manageable. Quote: Christianb wrote: Anways unless you're utilizing reg.exe you should never be creating an installer from a batch file. Quote: AlecStaar wrote: I am, in doing registrations of various .reg files... and some OLE server registrations (if that is another thing you meant, not doing regedit.exe or regedt32.exe but instead using regsvr32.exe etc.) No I'm refering to getting these system folder paths from the registry using reg.exe which can be called from a batch file: here's the registry settings you were asking about and I alluded to: Code: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders]"Common Start Menu"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Start Menu""Common Desktop"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Desktop""Common AppData"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Application Data""Common Programs"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Start Menu\\Programs""Common Documents"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Documents""Common Administrative Tools"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Administrative Tools""Common Startup"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup""Common Templates"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Templates""Personal"="D:\\""Common Favorites"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Favorites" Now that you see how segmented these folders can be perhaps you'll understand exactly why you need to move to an installer ASAP 8) . -Christian

Hi Alec, Good grief that was a long reply . Oh well so was my post . Quote: Except for size... they usually add on about 1-3 mb, which is why I went with batches for now... keeps it under 16mb, from its 13++ mb size now. Actually InnoSetup is hella thin, it BZips the installation files and creates a Delphi (yes I like delphi too, it's hella cool, but I can't code in it for s h / t) installation package. I've never used a thinner installer. I imagine that the InnoSetup 3.0 packages are larger. I haven't used IS3 yet. -Christian

Hi bats31, Making files hidden isn't any more of a pain than dicking with security options . However, what you'll need to do is create a guest or user account for everybody else, I'd recommend making everybody else a guest unless they need to be able to save documents to the system, most people usually just want to browse the web these days. Then you right click over the folder you want to lock and click on the security tab and give full control to Administrators and remove control to everyone else. Also you'll want to disable inherit security options from parent object, that way the public drive and or parent folder rights won't overide your folder specific rights. Good Luck, Christian

Hi Tom-Boy, What did you need the screenies for any ways? Are you making a fan website or something? -Christian

Sorry I forgot to post the helpfile earlier. If you look at my preview post their is now a hypelink in there. Also what language did you write your main application in? Thanks, Christian

Hi AlecStaar, Good for you shareware man . You do get a cape with that by the way . Just about anything, and I do mean anything, you can do with a batch file you can do better with a industry level installer like InnoSetup. Hell even microsoft hid an InnoSetup Installer recently inside of .msi(WIndows Installer Package), because it's just too easy, smaller, and faster . It was in one of their Outlook Express stationary installers I believe. There might be a screenshot to it on Jordan Russel's (the author's) website. Anways unless you're utilizing reg.exe you should never be creating an installer from a batch file. The reason being that I can install my system folder at C:\System\ and my desktop at C:\Stupid Desktop Icons\ and my Documents and Settings Folder at X:\The moon\. If you use InnoSetup their are intrinsic constants for each of these key folders if you read the help file you can read all of them ISetup.zip , but they look like this: You would install your .exe to "{pf}\My Nifty Program". YOu might put a shortcut aT {UserFavorites}\Links for your program. Okay I just read all three batches. Not only will InnoSetup look more proffessional, but it'll install to the right folders every time, quite unlike your batch file. InnoSetup will also provide error messages if it fails to register an OCX. Simply put it's a gillion times better than what you've got. Although batch files are cool . I have never used v3.0 which finally left beta on the 16th of this month. I probably won't use it for a while longer. If you can hurry you can still download a tried and true stable version of 2.0. Also if you do make an installer be sure to go the website and join the newsgroup so you can get help when you need it. Also if you want to sent me a registration number for my time, that'd be a nice gesture . Good Luck Amigo, Christian

Under what context are you trying to make a Power Users? Are you admin of a network? Are you the admin of your system? Or are you simply trying to ward off evil internet spirits by surfing with reduced rights? Personally if you're an admin why not just give users the power that they deserve and focus on making consistant backups. Good Luck, Christian