Spacejock Software and Vista
All Spacejock Software programs work with Vista, but there are several ways to ensure trouble-free operation. On Vista the Programs folder is protected, which means applications shouldn't add or change files in that folder when run by ordinary users. A number of my programs now support this concept, but not all. (See the specific application notes at the foot of this page.)
The first, and easiest, way to ensure things work is to simply install each program into a sub-directory of your User folder. Vista will set all file permissions correctly, and you'll have no trouble saving data. The downside with this approach is that on a multi-user system, each person will need to install their own copy of the software. The upside is that each user will have their own data, and it won't be visible to other users.
The second way is to install to the Programs folder as usual, but set the 'run as' permissions on the program's exe file to 'Administrator'. This will ensure that the program can write to its data files.
The third way is to set the program's exe to 'Windows XP compatibility mode', which will allow things to work just as they do on previous versions of Windows.
In almost every case, you can install the application in administrator mode but should not run it in this mode directly after installation. If you do, the application will create its settings file with administrator-only permissions, and when you run the app as a regular user it will not be able to save its settings. There is a fix: Simply highlight all the files in the application folder and set all their permissions so that your regular user account can write to them.
UPDATE: I've created an installer for the OCX files required by my software. If you get error messages about OCX files, simply download AllRuntimes.exe and run it to set up the required files. On Windows XP and Vista you will need to enter Admin mode to install this software, since it installs files into the System folder.
Specific notes per application
FCharts SE and Pro
As of the most recent version, when you perform a complete install of FCharts into an empty folder, the first time you run the application it will create a folder called FCharts in your Documents path. All settings, data and logs will be stored in this new folder, and nothing will be written to the FCharts program folder.
However, if you're transferring your data from another PC and you copy the FCharts program folder (FCharts) into C:\Programs, when you run the program it will recognise that it should use this folder instead of setting up a new one in the Documents directory. To fix this, simply move the FCharts folder from C:\Programs to C:\Documents (or wherever your user folder is) and THEN perform a fresh install of the program to C:\Programs\FCharts.
yRead1 and 2
yRead uses an older '4' version of the speech API, and I doubt it will be compatible with Vista. However, yRead2 uses the SAPI 5.1, which should work.
yWriter, yBook, BookDB, etc
For now I recommend you install these apps directly to your Documents folder - e.g. C:\Documents\BookDB, C:\Documents\yBook and so on. The programs themselves are very small, and most of the space in the folder will be used by your data. If you have multiple users on the same computer, each will have their own set of data.
Windows and Vista are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
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