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Installing by hand |
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Technical articles
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 |
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| 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. |
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Step 2: list the files |
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| 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. |
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Step 3: create a Cardbox folder |
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| 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. |
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Step 4: run a batch file |
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| 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"
Once you have edited the batch file, save it, and execute
it simply by typing its name.
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| 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. |
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Installing the sample files |
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| 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.
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| 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. |
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Possible problems |
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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. |
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Step 5: copy files by hand |
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| 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. |
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Step 6: run Cardbox |
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| 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 ยท
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