INSTALLATION PROBLEMS
Example 1: A PC/Mac hybrid school CD with network
installation options. There was a teacher component and a student component.
The Teacher component is referred to as the "Management System" below. This
was an early round test.
WINDOWS
- The Windows volume does not have a name. It is just labeled "untitled."
We suggest naming it "*****". The Mac volume is named "*****" and if the
Windows volume had the same name, this could present problems for CD-ROM
towers that can display both volumes on a cross-platform network.
- The final setup screen for ***** tells the user that, "Setup can launch
the Readme file and *****. Choose the options you want below." However,
there are no choices listed below and no boxes to be checked. Either these
choices should be added or these two sentences should be removed from the
screen.
- In the installation of the Management System the "Select Components"
dialog is missing its explanation. Also, the choices should be "Local Install"
and "Network Install" as they are in this part of the ***** installation.
- The minimum install did not work from a network CD-ROM tower. When you
run the program, it looks for the login director file on the local CD-ROM,
even though you are running from the network CD-ROM: We tried navigating
manually to the correct location of the CD-ROM but the installation still
failed. If we have the CD-ROM in the local hard drive, then we don't have
this problem. We understand that the product was designed to have only the
Central Database of student files on the network. If so, perhaps you didn't
intend to allow the use of a network CD-ROM tower. However, if a school
does not have enough hard drive space to do the Full install (181 MB for
the *****) on every system, then they will need to have a CD-ROM
in the internal CD-ROM drive of all the systems where the Full install can't
be done. A network administrator will try to share the CD-ROM from the network
just as we did. You should make it clear whether your licensing policies
allow this and whether it will work technically.
- The way the Central Database must be installed on a network may be difficult
for some teachers to do and some schools may object. We were advised by
the developer that the Central Database must be installed into the root
of a mapped network drive, otherwise the ***** program cannot find the data
files and will not launch. The ***** software does a search of all the network
drive letters the first time it is run to find the Central Database and
then puts this location into a preference file. This is not standard, and
we think that it would be better if this location were manually entered
or browsed to during the installation of the Management System and/or *****
instead. Insisting on being on the root of a network drive is very unusual.
Preferably, the location should be any subdirectory on the network. Typically
network administrators do not allow users to install to the root of a network
drive. If the installation of the Central Database remains as is, the requirement
to install to the root of a mapped network volume should be clearly explained
in the documentation.
- It would be best if the Full and Minimum installation options for *****
and the Management System listed their disk space requirements next to each
option on Setup Options dialog.
- The program group that is created is just ***** (the Company name). It
might be better if it included the product name, unless you want all your
company products to go in that program group.
