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It looks like lots of programs are going to have problems with Vista if
they try to write to their own folder. I've pasted a description of the
problem and another workaround below. Apparently disabling user accounts
during the installation does the same thing as running the program as
administrator and is certainly more convenient if it works.
--
Dennis
PRAXIS and Microsoft VISTA
Microsoft, having been considerably bashed for security problems in its
software, has made a change that will cause problems with many
pre-existing programs. In VISTA, programs are not allowed to write to
the directories they are installed in. There are a lot of programs that
do this, often in order to simplify backups of the installation for its
users.
PRAXIS, is currently designed to store its configuration settings and
calibration files in its home directory (usually under "..Program
Files\Praxis"). If you install PRAXIS into VISTA, you will find that
PRAXIS starts giving error messages even before all the forms appear on
the screen! In fact, you may find that you won't be able to close down
PRAXIS in VISTA, since the error messages prevent you from even getting
enough control to close the program (using the tray button won't close
it either if that happens). You may have to use Ctl-Alt-Delete to get
to the Task Manager so you can close PRAXIS down.
We are working to come up with the least painful way to deal with this
situation. It would be simple to just change the storage directory for
all of PRAXIS's cal files, settings, and default for data files. The
problem with that simple approach is that many PRAXIS scripts,
including those custom-written by customers, refer directly to PRAXIS'
home directory, and these scripts could be 'broken' by the simple change
of 'storage' directory.
TEMPORARY WORKAROUND FOR STARTUP OF PRAXIS IN VISTA: If you need to use
PRAXIS in a VISTA system, it can be done relatively simply. Just run
PRAXIS 'as administrator'. It isn't enough to just have your user
privileges set to the administrator level. You must actually, each time
you start PRAXIS, select "Run as Administrator". To do that, go to the
PRAXIS icon on your desktop and RIGHT-click on it (NOT LEFT-click). A
menu pops up, select "Run as Administrator" and off you go.
PRAXIS HELP: Microsoft wants to lead users away from using their solid
and well-known (and well-liked by many) Win Help system. Win Help is
the little application that comes up when you use Help in PRAXIS and
many other programs.
Microsoft itself has gone to an HTML type help system and no longer
directly supports WinHelp in the new VISTA operating system. What this
means for PRAXIS under VISTA, is that at this time, Help will not work
for it. It won't crash or anything, you'll just get a helpful pop-up
window telling you that Microsoft is helping you by not letting you use
Help and that they are trying to discourage it.. There is a download
that VISTA owners can get to enable use of Win Help from
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82148
Best advice: if you don't have a particular need for VISTA, it would be
simpler, for now, to hold off on changing to Vista. All the graphic
gingerbread it offers (and not much more) won't justify the grief
you'll have to deal with.
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