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Installation woes

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Installation woes

Postby jcberne » Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:13 pm

Hi all,

I'm having a really weird problem. We have a license that allows us to install an insane amount of copies at the university I work at.

I'm having some really weird problems installing the product from the discs we bought.

On both OSes (mac and win) I'm experiencing problems just installing the software - not even gotten to the point of regestering it yet. It gets through around 80% of the install and just then bombs saying "install was unsucessful" and quits. However, I've been able to install it on a few computers without fail.

We're using Win7/XP and mac os 10.6.x (no lion here on my lab machines) I can't pin it down to a vers. of win software or updates of the mac software.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks, all

Joe
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Re: Installation woes

Postby Surfwhammy » Thu Feb 16, 2012 5:26 am

jcberne wrote:Hi all,

I'm having a really weird problem. We have a license that allows us to install an insane amount of copies at the university I work at.

I'm having some really weird problems installing the product from the discs we bought.

On both OSes (mac and win) I'm experiencing problems just installing the software - not even gotten to the point of regestering it yet. It gets through around 80% of the install and just then bombs saying "install was unsucessful" and quits. However, I've been able to install it on a few computers without fail.

We're using Win7/XP and mac os 10.6.x (no lion here on my lab machines) I can't pin it down to a vers. of win software or updates of the mac software.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks, all

Joe


This really is a question for Notion Music Technical Support, but these are a few thoughts that might be helpful:

(1) If you are going to install NOTION 3 onto a lot of student and professor computers, then my advice is to devise a way to do it over your university or laboratory network, since sooner or later the installation DVDs will have scratches and so forth. Also, it is more efficient to do installs over a network, since the work can be automated, which then allows you to focus on other tasks . . .

[NOTE: The folks at Notion Music Technical Support should be able to help you devise a practical strategy for allowing the students and professors to do network installations. On the Windows side, you might need to do a tiny bit of scripting, which also might be the case on the Mac side, but it is not difficult to configure stuff for network-based installations . . . ]

(2) You need to be able to login to an account on the target computers that has Administrator privileges, since some of the activities require elevated privileges and so forth . . .

(3) It is possible that the computers need to be able to connect to the web for some of the intermediate installation steps, although this is something that Notion Music Technical Support will be able to explain if it is a requirement . . .

(4) You might be able to gain a few clues on the Windows machines if there is a MSI logfile that you can examine, but on the Mac side I am not aware of any specific logging activities. And on the Windows side if you can determine the sequence of events in the installation, as well as whether it is being done via MSI at some level, then there is a way to run the MSI file with options that do logging. Whether this is the case on the Mac is another matter, and I have not done a lot of Mac installer work, so I really have no idea . . .

(5) If the installs that have problems always stop at the same step, then you should be able to monitor them to determine more information regarding what they are trying to do at the time they encounter an error, where for example on the Mac if the installation crashes, there will be what in the mainframe universe is called a "dump", which will have vastly detailed information on the offending instruction(s) and what was happening at the time . . .

(6) Considering that the installation is successful on some machines, another avenue of investigation is to focus on what is different about the machines where the installation is unsuccessful. Are they older machines with older DVD or Superdrives? Are they slower machines? Do they have less memory?

There are aspects of installer programs which can be time sensitive, and it is possible that on slower machines something simply is timing-out . . .

(7) It also can be helpful to determine the specific versions of Windows and Mac OS X where the installation is successful, since for example some of the Windows machines might not have certain service packs that are essential and some of the Mac machines might not have various supporting software upgrades, like JAVA runtimes or whatever . . .

(8) Perhaps more so for Windows machines, the particular paths where software is installed are important, and it might be the case with the Windows machines that encounter problems that the student or professor decided to use a nonstandard naming convention for directories or whatever. Things are a bit simpler on the Mac, and I would not expect a typical Mac user to engage in sua sponte tweaking, since the general philosophy in the Mac universe is that stuff "just happens", so there is no need to mess with it . . .

[NOTE: When end-users decide to get "fancy" and specify certain types of names for paths, directories, folders, and so forth, this can create problems for installation programs, since while the general rule is that any valid path name, directory name, folder name, file name, and so forth never should cause a problem for an installation program, this is not always the way it works in the real world, especially when installation programs are customized based on the logic that nobody ever would use a particular character or sequence of characters in a path, directory, folder, or file name. When I do custom installer work in the Windows universe, I use InstallShield, and it has special API functions that handle the various path, directory, folder, and file name stuff, which is one of the things I like about InstallShield, but it all depends on the way the NOTION 3 installer work is done, as well as the installation program authoring software, where for reference InstallShield is installation authoring software. InstallShield costs a bit more than some installer authoring software, but it has API functions that make a lot of stuff considerably easier to do, especially with respect to verifying all the requirements for a successful installation before the actual installation is done . . . ]

InstallShield (Flexera Software)

(9) On the Mac side, sometimes it can be a good idea to verify and repair Permissions as well as to do a disk check before installing software, and there are similar procedures in the Windows universe . . .

(10) It is very important to ensure that no other programs are running when you do installs, at least when you encounter problems with an installation program . . .

(11) Most likely, you are doing the installations after a clean boot, but if not, then this always is a good starting strategy . . .

(12) More so in the Windows universe, it is important to consider antivirus and other types of security software, which can interfere with an installation program. There are antivirus programs for the Mac, but I am not certain that a lot of people use them. Being a bit of a cynic at times, in the Windows universe I would expect student and professor machines to have virtual festivals of viruses, adware, malware, scriptlets, and lots of other gnarly stuff, so this is another thing to consider as you survey the landscape . . .

[NOTE: I have not checked on this in a while, but several years ago Microsoft had a program that would scan a Windows machine and detect potential problems with viruses and so forth, and it worked very nicely, although for some types of problems it was necessary to fix them yourself, which can be a lot of FUN if you enjoy solving strange and bizarre puzzles. For a while, I had a Windows machine that I intentionally allowed to be attacked by viruses and so forth, at which time I would devise a way to remove the offending software, since in an odd way it is interesting to discover some of the strategies that folks use to infect Windows machines. The most fascinating strategy I encountered involved a virus that added a low-level "hook" in the background that monitored changes to the system registry, which I discovered after manually removing an offending system registry item only to discover that it reappeared "automagically" a few seconds later, which was simply brilliant, but I identified it and zapped it by booting to Safe Mode and then switching to MS-DOS (a.k.a., "command line mode") or whatever, since as brilliant as the concept was, the "hook" was not able to run in the background in every possible scenario . . . ]

SUMMARY

The best strategy is to contact Notion Music Technical Support, but these are a few thoughts, and perhaps one of them might be helpful . . .

Lots of FUN! :D

P. S. Once you determine the solution for the problem, be sure to post a follow-up message, since it can help someone else in the future if they are encountering the same problem . . .
The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
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Re: Installation woes

Postby Brian » Thu Feb 16, 2012 3:50 pm

Hi Joe,

This is Brian from NOTION Music. Since you have a site license for our software, I want to urge you to give me a call and I'd be happy to help you identify the problem. It could be a couple of things and might require some troubleshooting. 866-398-2994 Just choose the option for Tech Support. The first thing that comes to mind is that NOTION3 is on a dual-layer DVD. Sometimes there is a problem with one of the two lenses in the DVD rom. When this happens, it seems that the DVD rom is working correctly when in fact, you only have problem with dual-layer DVDs. Please feel free to call or email me directly.

Best Regards,



Brian
NOTION Tech Support
support@notionmusic.com
Brian
NOTION Music Tech Support
866-398-2994
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Re: Installation woes

Postby jcberne » Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:24 pm

Thanks, all.

Brian, I WILL be calling soon. Thanks!

To the first poster - we do have a system of packaging, it bombed on the pkg so then I tried the disc. I mentioned the disc because I was afraid that the suggestion would be to try the disc (which is what I'd say as well)

Joe
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