Installing by hand

This information is for Version 2.0 of Cardbox for Windows.
We recommend that you upgrade to Cardbox 3.

Installing by hand

Very rarely, the Setup program fails to install Cardbox. It may crash, or it may fail to start, complaining that the source files have been corrupted.

These problems must be connected to the nature of certain specific Windows installations: we have never been able to reproduce them. Moreover, the Setup program was supplied by Microsoft and so cannot be modified.

This article takes you through the process of installing Cardbox by hand, from floppy disk or CDROM. If you have a single setup file downloaded from the web site, see the additional instructions at the bottom of this article.

Step 1: check for Expand

Before you install Cardbox by hand, you should confirm that you have access to the EXPAND command. To check whether you have this, open an MSDOS prompt and to type the command EXPAND. If you get a message that looks like this:

Type the location and name of the
               compressed file you want to expand.
               (Example: A:\EGA.SY_)
Compressed file:

then you do have access to this command, and you can press Ctrl+Break to get back to the DOS prompt.

If you get an error message when you type EXPAND, search your hard disk for the file EXPAND.EXE. To do this, open the Start menu and select Find, then Files or Folders.

Step 2: list the files

Take all your Cardbox floppy disks and list the contents of each of them: the best way is to open the MSDOS prompt and use the DIR command, because you can redirect the output of the command to your printer for future reference.

If you are using a CDROM, then it will contain a series of floppy disk images in folders called DISK1, DISK2, DISK3, and DISK4. List the contents of each.

To list to your printer:

DIR A: >PRN

To list to a file:

DIR A: >DISK1.LST

You can then use a Windows program such as WordPad or Notepad to open and print this file.

Step 3: create a Cardbox folder

If this is a new installation of Cardbox, choose where you are going to install Cardbox on your hard disk, and create the appropriate folder.

In any case, in your MSDOS prompt, use the CHDIR or CD command to make that folder the current one.

Create a folder called SAMPLES within the Cardbox folder. This is needed even if you do not want to install the sample files.

Step 4: run a batch file

Here is a skeleton batch file:

expand accusoft.dl_ accusoft.dll expand barcode.dl_ barcode.dll expand british.vt_ british.vtd expand buttons.dl_ buttons.dll expand cardbox.ex_ cardbox.exe expand cbox.dl_ cbox.dll expand cbox.hl_ cbox.hlp expand cboxfmt.dl_ cboxfmt.dll expand cboximg.dl_ cboximg.dll expand cboxio.dl_ cboxio.dll expand cboxmac.dl_ cboxmac.dll expand cboxmsg.dl_ cboxmsg.dll expand cboxnet.ex_ cboxnet.exe expand cboxobj.dl_ cboxobj.dll expand cboxprt.dl_ cboxprt.dll expand comp.dl_ comp.dll expand compeng.dl_ compeng.dll expand deco.dl_ deco.dll expand default.in_ default.ini expand vtspell.dl_ vtspell.dll

You will have to edit this file as follows:

Find each of the left-hand filenames in your directory listings.
Prefix it with the appropriate drive and folder name.
For example, if you find that CBOXIO.DLL is in the DISK2 folder, that line of the file will become
expand d:disk2\cboxio.dl_ cboxio.dll
If the Expand command did not work when you tried it in Step 1, and you had to locate EXPAND.EXE elsewhere, then you will have to replace all occurrences of "expand" in the batch file with the full filename of the expand.exe file that you found: for example,"c:\Program Files\Command\expand.exe"(in Windows 95 and above, the quotes are needed in any DOS filename that contains a space).

Once you have edited the batch file, save it, and execute it simply by typing its name.

You can copy this skeleton to your hard disk. In your Web browser, highlight the list of Expand commands, then copy to the Clipboard. Open Notepad, paste the list of commands, and save it in a file with the file type .BAT.

If you are installing from floppy disks, then you only have to prefix each filename with a: - that is, without a folder name. But you will have to make four copies of this batch file, one for each disk, and then in each copy of the file, erase all the lines except those that belong to files on that disk.

You may find it easier to create a temporary folder on your hard drive, create folders named DISK1, DISK2, DISK3, and DISK4 within it, and copy each floppy disk to the appropriate folder. Then you can proceed as for a CDROM installation.

We have assumed that your CDROM is drive d: on your computer. If it isn't, you should use the appropriate drive letter instead.

Installing the sample files

If you want to install the sample databases that come with Cardbox, here is the skeleton batch file for doing this:

expand abstract.fi_ samples\abstract.fil expand abstract.fm_ samples\abstract.fmt expand applics.fi_ samples\applics.fil expand applics.fm_ samples\applics.fmt expand contacts.fi_ samples\contacts.fil expand contacts.fm_ samples\contacts.fmt expand images.fi_ samples\images.fil expand images.fi_ samples\images.fim expand images.fm_ samples\images.fmt expand tutorial.fi_ samples\tutorial.fil expand tutorial.fm_ samples\tutorial.fmt expand vacancy.fi_ samples\vacancy.fil expand vacancy.fm_ samples\vacancy.fmt

Edit and run it as before.

There really are two files called images.fi_: it is not a misprint. They are on different disks, and you need one command line for each of them. The small one (about 1600 bytes) is expanded to images.fil, the large one (about 880KB) to images.fim.

Possible problems

Bad command or filename: The EXPAND command has not been found. Check that you have specified it correctly in the command line.
Error - can't open input file: name: The given file doesn't exist. You may have given it the wrong drive or folder name.

If error messages go past too fast for you to see them, print out the batch file and type the commands by hand: it is tedious, but there are not that many of them and the installation only has to be done once.

Step 5: copy files by hand

If you are installing from a serialised installation disk, this will contain the serialisation file CBOXSER.DLL, which you should copy to the directory into which you have installed all the Cardbox program files. Cardbox will not run without it.

CBOXSER.DLL is not compressed and can be copied directly without using the EXPAND command.

CBOXSER.DLL is on the first floppy disk. On a CDROM, it is in the DISK1 folder.

Step 6: run Cardbox

If you were upgrading an existing installation of Cardbox, the upgrade is now complete. If this is a new installation, it will be complete when Cardbox has been run for the first time.

In Windows 95 and above, you can run Cardbox by typing cardbox at the MSDOS prompt, or by finding cardbox.exe in Explorer and double-clicking on it. In Windows 3.1, you can run Cardbox by finding cardbox.exe in File Manager and clicking on it.

In either case, Cardbox will then offer to create an icon for you so that you can run it directly in future.

Installing from a single downloaded file

If you have downloaded a single installation file from the Internet then there are a couple of extra steps to be taken first.

Run the downloaded file: the name depends on the version you have downloaded, but it will probably be uk200.exe.
When the blue Cardbox for Windows setup screen appears, the Cardbox installation files will have been extracted from uk200.exe and copied to your hard disk.
Do not respond to any prompt that the setup screen presents to you. Instead, hold down the Windows key and press E, to open a copy of Windows Explorer.
Find where the files have been copied to. This varies from system to system. On some systems, the location will be C:\Temporary Files\~CBX0001.TMP; on others, it may be C:\Windows\Temp\~cbx0001.tmp. You will know you have found the right location if it contains a set of four subdirectories, called DISK1, DISK2, DISK3 and DISK4. If you can't find the location then you could try using the Windows search function, but our experience is that with each new version of Windows, the search function is less and less reliable. Still, you could always try searching for a filename such as CBXPRT.DL_ (note the underline in place of the final L), which is one of the files that will have been copied.
Copy the four subdirectories DISK1, DISK2, DISK3 and DISK4 to a location of your choice. Remember where it is.
Return to the setup screen and cancel the installation.
Now go back to the main part of this article and follow the instructions.

Technical articles ·