Command line installs

[Gerard Sweeney]

As a techie faced with the considerably less than pleasant task of installing patches to our 300-odd AS2 PCs, can I humbly request that you create the following:


1. Command-line friendly installer for AS2 patches/products.

2. A standalone utility to uninstall previous versions of Activ driver... Your file about techies being able to install v4 of the driver from their desks is more than slightly misleading - we still need to get rid of the previous versions first!!

3. The option to not create those HORRIBLE Windows Installer type shortcut icons by default.. We don't all want CTRL ALT A running AS2, y'know! What's wrong with the normal straightforward shortcut to exe? :-)

4. The ability to download updated Activ 2 resources. Perhaps this is already out there, but it's not on the downloads pages.


For point 1, I've managed to use a
modified MSI transform courtesy or ORCA to get around the irritating "must be run from setup".. However, I shouldn't really have to in this day and age.. I realise v3 is getting praise for finally supporting MSI installs, but how about v2?!

For point 2, I guess I'll need to write something to do an uninstall, reboot, install v4 and reboot again.. What a palaver!

Point 3, I've used my MST to just not create the shortcuts at all, and then copy sensible shortcuts I've created myself..

Point 4, the resources CD which comes with later versions of AS2 is radically different from others.



Sorry to sound grumpy and curmudgeonly, but I'm sure I'm not alone with these not exactly ground-breaking requests? Think of the techies! Won't someone please think of the techies?! :-)

Cheers,
Gerard

[Neil Calverley]

Hi Gerard

I used to be a Techie so I do appreciate where you are coming from :)

To try and answer your requests –

1. There is a version of Activstudio 2 that was built especially for Network Admins and deploying that is 100% MSI. The last version of this was v2.5.82 and if you get in touch with Tech Support they should be able to sort you out with a copy, but there will be no further development of the v2 software.
As you are already aware all current v3 software is now 100% MSI and we also make available .msp files for patching Admin Images.

2. Unfortunately there are that many differing versions of the older Activdrivers that it would be extremely difficult and time consuming to write something to cater for uninstalling in all scenarios.
However in moving forward the new v4 Activdrivers no longer require reboots after install or removing when upgrading them. So although this might be a pain initially to move to v4 drivers hopefully from then on all should be easier.

3. You will be happy to hear there are no more Hot Key shortcuts for launching the v3 software, although we do still create by default a standard Desktop Shortcut. If this is something you feel most people would prefer as optional it is something I can look into for future releases.

4. This is something catered for with the new v3 through the use of Resource Packs. Although these are additional resources rather updates, you have the ability to download and import them directly into the v3 Resource sets.

I hope this has answered some of you request/queries and shows that we are committed to listening to customers (and those that support them) and improving our software.


Regards

Neil.

[Gerard Sweeney]

Hi, Neil..

Thanks for your prompt reply..

Can I ask if there is still a charge for this MSI version of 2? (I believe there was talk of this on another thread)..

My authority has invested heavily in Promethean, with well over 300 boards installed recently, and we were not aware that such a version existed at the time - otherwise we'd have obviously gone with that version..

In terms of uninstalling the drivers, I believe I've found a way of doing it which should work for all versions.. I've only got access to v3.0.3 and 3.0.5, but they've worked so far.. If anyone is interested in supplying other versions for me to test, I'd be grateful.

Cheers,
Gerard

[Neil Calverley]

Hi Gerard

I believe there is still a nominal charge of £20 for the CD just to cover costs, but your best bet is to talk directly to Tech Support on that.

Yes unfortunately it is a shame you were not made aware of the 2.5 Network Version. Also is/was v3 not an option as there are many advancements and improvements with the new versions.


Regards

Neil.

[Gerard Sweeney]

Hi, Neil..

We had numerous performance problems with version 3 seemingly caused by our redirection of "My Documents" to a network area. We'd seen this problem with early versions of 2, so were advised to wait until subsequent bug-fixes of 3 were done.


Cheers,
Gerard

[Neil Calverley]

This sounds similar to a problem we had with virus scanner related issues where Studio INI file rewrites were being hit by the checker.
Exacerbated when My Docs is on the network.

We will look into this further...



Neil.