TC6 installer hangs

[chrisvw]

I upgraded TC551 to TC6 on a few machines, and 2 out of 4 times the installer stopped responding (once on NT4, once on XP Pro). I had to End Task the installer. The installation did seem to finish, however, because TC6's exe found its way into the totalcmd folder.

Image: http://home.mweb.co.za/ha/hamham/totcmd/totcmd6install.jpg

[Coco]

I also had this issue some times and it has been reported before look at:
http://ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=1963

[ghisler(Author)]

This happens when ANY program in the background doesn't respond. Total Commander uses DDE (Dynamic data exchange) to send the new shortcuts to Explorer. Unfortunately DDE uses broadcasting to contact Explorer, so if any program doesn't respond, DDE will hang.

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)

Is there a special reason why the installer uses DDE to create the icons?

Taken from official Microsoft user experience guide

Finally, avoid displaying unnecessary message windows while the user is installing and setting
up your application. Consolidate progress messages as much as possible, and use the IShellLink
system interface to create your Start menu entries, not the outdated DDE mechanism.

[ghisler(Author)]

Because with DDE, Explorer determines where to create the icons, which works on all Windows versions. With IShellLink, the installer has to determine where to create them, which changes between Windows versions and is very complex. It would probably double the size of the installer...

[Lefteous]

Because with DDE, Explorer determines where to create the icons, which works on all Windows versions. With IShellLink, the installer has to determine where to create them, which changes between Windows versions and is very complex. It would probably double the size of the installer...

The current installer installs a shell link to the all users start menu and a shell link to the desktop of the current user. This behavior can't be changed by the user. An improved installer should ask the the user if he wants to install for all users or just for the current user, when installing on an NT machine. The current behavior is a little bit confusing.

I don't think it is very difficult to determine the start menu and desktop location.

As far as I know this key is valid for all windows versions:

To install for the Current user only or on a Win9x machine:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

There is a "Desktop" and a "Programs" entry.

To install for all users on a WinNT machine:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

There is a "Common Desktop" and a "Common Programs" entry.

[CADweazle]

2chrisvw

Besides these DDE-things:
I've had installation problems, because I had been experimenting with a handset %commander_path%-environment variable on the one hand and wrong (as I suppose) entries in the registry under
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Ghisler\Total Commander" on the other.

After deleting both the installation ran through as intended!

Greetings,