Night Owl 6/Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso/047a/bdadx.zip/INSTALL.DOC

Text File | 1991-11-24 | 6KB | 104 lines

    INSTALL.EXE is designed for three purposes: 1) to preserve any custom
food records you may have added to the main database, 2) to order the
program files correctly on three floppy disks if you're using floppy disks
only and 3) to make installation as easy as possible.

    Put the installation disk in your A or B drive, type INSTALL and
respond to the prompts that appear on screen. Installation will proceed
automatically. Ocassionally it doesn't. This is most frequently caused by
trying to install The Better Diet Analyzer on a hard disk without
sufficient free space. If you do experience a problem, this file explains
the installation process and any error messages you might receive.

    The Better Diet Analyzer, when distributed on disk, is usually
compacted into four self-extracting files: BDAMAIN.EXE, BDAHLP.EXE,
BDAUTIL.EXE and BDADOC.EXE. INSTALL determines 1) if you are installing on
a hard drive,  2) the name of the subdirectory where you want The Better
Diet Analyzer, 3) whether there is sufficient disk space to proceed and 4)
whether a copy of FOOD.MDF (the main data file) already exists in the
subdirectory you named.


    If you are installing on a hard drive and INSTALL doesn't find at
least 730,000 kilobytes of free space on your hard drive it will stop and
refuse to install the program. If it finds a prior copy of FOOD.MDF, it
will search the file for records that you added and save them temporarily.
Then, after it copies the new copy of FOOD.MDF over your old copy, it adds
the saved records to the end of the file. If any saved records are added,
the utility TABLES.EXE will have to run before you can use The Better Diet
Analyzer. INSTALL will attempt to run TABLES at the end of the installation
process. (This will be discussed in more detail in a moment.)

    During the course of installation, some problems can arise: 1) Your
hard disk could be full, or nearly full; 2) the distribution files could be
corrupted, either through a physical change in the disk or through copying
and handling by a disributor or other user of The Better Diet Analyzer;  3)
the distribution disk could be damaged, or 4) the floppy disks you have
ready to receive the files could be damaged, or full or both.

    If a problem develops, you'll get an error message from INSTALL. The
following is a list of possible error messages, possible causes of those
errors and suggested actions to take:

    "Error in disk file"  INSTALL could not open a file it needed to
access. This probably was your old copy of FOOD.MDF, and the error could
result because the file is corrupted or its read-only bit was set, or it is
on a read-only floppy disk.  Consult your DOS manual for changing the read-
only status of the file.  Or, try renaming FOOD.MDF to another name, and
run INSTALL again.

    "B Drive is not available. Unable to install."  You told INSTALL you
were not installing The Better Diet Analyzer on a hard disk, but your
computer's BIOS indicates that it does not have a second floppy drive.
INSTALL must have at least two floppy drives or one floppy drive and a hard
drive.

    "Insufficient disk space or drive error. Check disk." This error
occurs when making a floppy-drive-only installation. The most like cause is
trying to install files onto a floppy disk that either has other, non-BDA,
files on it, or one without at least 360k of space. Be sure to use three
formated, empty diskettes for floppy-only installation.

    "Insufficient disk space to proceed with installation."  INSTALL
couldn't find enough disk space on your hard drive. Erase some non-
essential files and trying running INSTALL again.


    "Disk copy error. Continue? Y/N"   You are installing non-compacted
program files. An error occurred when copying one of the files, perhaps
because of a damaged diskette. Answering yes will skip that file and
continue with the installation. If the file is essential (and almost all of
them are), The Better Diet Analyzer will not run without it. If the file or
diskette is damaged, contact me for another distribution diskette.

    "Insert the disk containing (filename) in A:\ and press ENTER, or ESC
to skip this file or <F10> to exit INSTALL" You are installing non-
compacted program files that were distributed on a set of two or three
floppy disks. INSTALL couldn't find the file it needs at this time on the
disk currently in the A drive. Put the disk with the file INSTALL needs in
the drive and continue.

    Once all the program files are installed, INSTALL will remember
whether you had a prior copy of FOOD.MDF and whether it saved custom food
records from that file. If it had saved custom records, it will add them to
the end of the new FOOD.MDF and attempt to run TABLES.EXE.  TABLES requires
a moderate amount of free RAM in order to run, so INSTALL will try to swap
itself to extended memory (EMS) if you have it on your machine, or to your
hard disk. The swap may fail -- for instance, if you don't have EMS and
your hard disk is nearly full or you don't have a hard disk. If INSTALL is
unable to swap, you'll get the following message:

    "TABLES failed. You must run TABLES from the command line"

    In that case, when INSTALL finishes running and you return to the C:\>
prompt (or A:> prompt), change to the subdirectory where you installed The
Better Diet Analyzer, or insert the disk containing TABLES.EXE. Then type
TABLES to run the TABLES.EXE program.  This is necessary if custom records
were found.