INSTALLATION PROBLEMS

Example 2: An early round test of a complex, multi-CD product.

1. On one of the Windows 98 machines, there are two CD-ROM drives; a Panasonic 32 speed and a Toshiba 12 speed. We placed the CD into the Panasonic drive and could view and explore the CD without a problem. When we attempted to install, however, we would get a General Protection Fault in SETUP.EXE. We then restarted the machine and attempted to reinstall with the same results. We tried the second set of CDs, and the installation would not even start up. We placed the CD into the Toshiba drive and had no problem installing at all.
   
   
2. On another Windows 98 computer, we began to install from the CD and near the end we got the message "Install failed. _INS5576 caused an invalid page fault in module ZDATAI51.DLL at 015f:10004827" and the installation stopped. No program group was created. We attempted to reinstall again, but when we double-clicked on the SETUP.EXE file, we got a message that "SETUP.EXE is not a valid Win32 application". We restarted and replicated the problem.
   
   
3. At the end of installation there should be a prompt for restarting the system before running the program for the first time. When we tried to run the program without restarting the machine, the pronunciations and Status symbols did not appear correctly. This prompt could ask the customer to choose to either have the installation restart the system immediately or allow the customer to manually restart the system later. The readme file should also advise the customer to restart after the installation as well. This will cut down on unnecessary calls to technical support.
   
   
4. The installation requires over 600Mb of the user's hard drive, but this is not mentioned anywhere during the install. While it is true that many newer computers will have this much free disk space, this is still an exceptionally large disk space requirement and at the very least the installation should indicate how much disk space it will use.
   
   
5. The icon that was listed in the Program Group was a generic icon. This should be replaced with a custom icon.
   
   
6. At the end of the installation, the dialog asks the user to choose the option below, but there are no options available to click on this screen. The only choice is the 'Finish' button, which closes the installer. Either the options listed on this screen should be added to it or the instruction to make this choice should be removed.
   
   
7. The program is supposed to start up with the second CD (data) in the CD drive, but there is no message or any indication of a problem at startup if the CD isn't there. Later, however, several features fail inexplicably with complex error messages. [Note: This section was edited for clarity. The detail in the original report was useful to the developer, but not to the casual reader]. There should have been a message at the end of installing the software telling the user to switch to the second CD before running the program.
   
   
8. There is no "Welcome" screen when you start the installation. Normally the installation would start with a "Welcome" screen, which would contain copyright information. Usually, this same information can be accessed during the program on an "About" option. The copyright information is missing there as well. Is this what you want?