Windows or Other Applications do not work After Installation of STRATEGY
Access Sharing violations are one of the most common installation problems that people run into on Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 systems. They are caused by trying to write to a file that is already open by another application. These files are almost always Microsoft provided DLLs (which are kept in the \Windows\System folder).
The fix for this is to close all applications before doing an installation. The "gotcha" is that there may be applications open that do not appear on the taskbar or the desktop. The most common case of this is IBM Aptiva which hides several little utilities in the background, but several other computer manufacturers do the same thing.
To get rid of these applications, close all of the obvious applications and press CTRL-ALT-Delete. This will bring up a list of the applications that are still running. Close them one-by-one and try the installation again after each close. After you have closed the offending application, the installation should proceed smoothly. Don't worry about this uninstalling anything critical. These applications are only in memory and will return when the computer is restarted.
This problem occurs when the setup kit tries to bring up the first dialog box in the setup routine.
We reported this to Microsoft and got several answers. After some distillation, it turned out this is part of a series of problems related to two files that are part of the Windows 95 system: OLEPRO32.DLL and OLEAUT32.DLL. There are lots of versions of these two files floating around and they are not all compatible.
Microsoft suggests that the easiest fix for this problem is to install Internet Explorer on your machine (now there's a surprise). At least it is a free solution. If you are running NT 4.0, they suggest installing Service Pack 3. The other alternatives that they suggest include installing Office 97, VB 5.0, VC++ 5.0, etc.
For those of you who do not wish to install additional Microsoft software to solve this problem, I will place a self-extracting zip file on the download page. After unzipping the files, close all applications and copy the files to your Windows\System folder. Reboot your computer and STRATEGY for Windows should install smoothly.
Unfortunately, our installation program cannot install the new DLLs automatically because it uses them to do the installation. We are looking at other installation options.
This problem should only occur when you have downloaded one of our files from the web. It is almost always the result of a transmission error during the download process.
The only fix for this problem is to repeat the download process. Note that downloading from the web is dependent on making lots of different connections work. The larger the files, the more like that something can go wrong.
This occurs when you try to install STRATEGY for Windows from a disk that is damaged. Please call us and we will be glad to send you new disks.
Windows or Other Applications do not work After Installation of STRATEGY
Call us immediately! (206) 525-9093. Although this is the worst news that you possibly can give us, we need to know immediately. If this happens, we will work around the clock to resolve your problem.
This should never happen, but it does. It wouldn't if everybody had the same set of applications and the apllications never changed, but they don't and the applications do. The underlying environment changes as well. Note that Microsoft has already released two service packs for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0.
It happens to Microsoft and it happens to every other software developer at some time. It is more likely to happen with beta test software than release software simply because the release software has already been tested with hundreds of other programs. We already know that the software delivers correct results before we go to beta test; the primary purpose of this testing is to identify and eliminate such incompatibilities.