Subject:
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Remedy to LDAO 2.1.4 Full Install
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Wed, 5 Jul 2000 15:37:57 GMT
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I want to really apologize for this mess, I hope I didn't affect *too* many
people. The severity and underlying causes of this disaster are going to
make me think long and hard about scrapping LDAO, and rewriting it in a
better development system. I won't rant too much here, I just wanted to
make sure everyone knows how badly I feel about the trouble I've caused.
On to business: I've finally worked through recovering from a LDAO 2.1.4
install on a Windows 98 system. I can give you a fairly definitive guide
to getting your system back on its feet.
Good news: you *don't* have to reformat your hard drive.
Bad news: While I have a better idea of the cause of the problem, I'm
still not sure what *exactly* caused the problem. I do know that it wasn't
a corrupted upload file. Most likely, one of the 'system' files installed
by ldaosetup.exe has some weird incompatibility, or one or more of the
source files are pre-corrupted (that is, maybe a file was bad before it was
archived into ldaosetup.exe), or some other file is required, but was left
out of ldaosetup.exe.
For right now, I'm going to have to pull the full install, and I don't have
an estimate of when it will be re-released. Which sucks, but not as bad as
leaving it up for downloading.
---------------------------------------------------------
What I did to get a crashed Windows system up and running
---------------------------------------------------------
Actually, I did a lot of things, so I'm not absolutely, totally, 100% sure
that the following will work. I'm pretty sure it will work, or else I'd be
posting this as "something you can try, and might help".
One caveat: I was operating in a Win98 system. If you've got something
else, you might have less (or more) success with this.
Another caveat: the following instructions involve doing a number of things
you are generally *not* supposed to do to Windows. Use these instructions
at your own risk, and definitely get a second opinion if you're not sure of
yourself (or my advice).
0. If possible, just rerun the Win98 Setup.
I don't think doing this will actually resolve the problem. It didn't help
my system. But if it *does* help your system, you've saved yourself a big
headache, at the expense of 30 minutes.
1. Boot into DOS.
If you've got a "Start Disk", boot from that. Otherwise, you can control
the boot process under Win98 by pressing the [Ctrl] key right after your
computer displays the messages about what hard drives are installed. This
should (after a few seconds) give you a menu of boot options. Choose
'Command Prompt Only'.
2. Hide the ldao-installed files.
All the following files are installed by ldaosetup.exe into you
Windows\System file. Rename or move these files elsewhere on your hard
drive.
asycfilt.dll
ccrpbds6.dll
comcat.dll
comdlg32.ocx
ctl3d32.dll
mfc42.dll
msvbvm60.dll
msvcrt40.dll
oleaut32.dll
oledlg.dll
olepro32.dll
regsvr32.exe
riched32.dll
richtx32.ocx
stdole2.tlb
tlbinf32.dll
Renaming the files is easy. Just CD C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, and enter the REN
command for each file, something like:
ren asycfilt.dll asycfilt.hid
There are two other files installed by ldaosetup.exe, that my Win98 CD
didn't want to reinstall. So I recommend leaving these files alone:
shlwapi.dll
regsvr32.dll
3. Run Win98 Setup.
This option is fairly straight-forward. If you've got a Win98 start
disk(ette), you should be able to boot up with CD-ROM support. If you're
just doing the "Command Prompt Only" boot, you might need to scratch around
a bit to get your CD activated. I can't help you much on this point.
4. Take care of the aftermath.
Steps 1 through 3 should get your system back on its feet. But there may
be other issues.
After I ran through the recovery procedure, I could get into Windows, and
most programs were OK. I came across a couple of problems which were
caused by the reinstallation Windows. You could have similar problems.
The first thing I noticed was that Outlook Express wouldn't work. I fixed
this by uninstalling Outlook Express, and then used the Windows Update
service to download a new version of the program.
The second thing I noticed was that DirectX was back-leveled. This was
resolved by using the "reinstall DirectX" function of the software that
needed it. I could have also fixed this through the Windows Update
website.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other things that possibly might be important, but I don't think they are.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thing 1.
The second thing I tried (the first thing I tried was step 0, above) was to
move the registry files out of the way, and then run Windows Setup. This
did allow me to get Windows going again, but many of my installed programs
were junked, because their settings were missing.
If you really need to get Windows going, and you don't care about your
program settings (you can usually rerun any setup programs to reinstall the
programs), you might try this approach.
There's also a slight chance that futzing with the registry files as a
second step had some impact on my actual resolution of the problem. That
doesn't seem very likely to me, but it *is* a possibility.
There is a very good reason not to try the following procedure, unless you
really need it. This is important, so let me emphasize it a bit.
*********************************************************
*** If you screw this procedure up, you could lose any ***
*** possibility of ever recovering your previous setup. ***
*********************************************************
The following instructions mess around with the registry files. These two
files contain most of the configuration information, both for your
operating system and your programs. If you lose or corrupt these files,
you aren't going to be coming back.
Do you fell thoroughly warned? Good.
What I did was to boot to DOS, and type the following commands:
C:
CD \WINDOWS
ATTRIB -R -S -H SYSTEM.DAT
ATTRIB -R -S -H USER.DAT
REN SYSTEM.DAT SYSTEM.SEB
REN USER.DAT USER.SEB
(Why .SEB? No special reason, except you probably don't have a system.seb
or user.seb on your hard drive already)
Then I ran Windows Setup.
This results in a mostly-clean installation, except all your files are
still hanging around, and some of your prior settings. It's actually an
ugly situation to be in, and I don't recommend it. But YMMV, so I thought
I should mention it.
Thing 2.
If you chose the "make backup files" option during LDAO installation,
you've got a directory with all the files that LDOA replaced during
installation. In Step 2 of my recovery directions, I supplied a list of
the system files added/replaced by ldaosetup.exe. After following step 2,
you could look in C:\PROGRA~1\LDAO\BACKUP for older versions of these
files, and copy these older versions to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. There's a slim
chance this could straighten your system out. It seems logical: ditch the
new files, restore the old files. That should work, right? Well, I tried
it, and it didn't work for me. Maybe it will work for you.
Steve
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | LDraw Add-On 2.1.4 Now Available
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| I've posted a minor update to LDAO. Besides fixing a few bugs, the various editors can now work more smoothly when L3Lab is used as the viewer. They correctly initialize polling, and default to the isometric '3D' view. Besides the mondo-big install (...) (24 years ago, 1-Jul-00, to lugnet.cad)
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