From: "Andrew XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
To: <john@webword.com>
Subject: Installing NAV
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 09:14:16 -0000


Just a couple of comments on your "installing NAV 2002" article, which I
bumped into.

I agree with you that the information you are given by the install
process isn't up to scratch, but I hope I can explain at least why you
had to restart 3 times:

The first time was to give you the latest version of Windows Installer.
Windows Installer is part of Windows 2000/XP and gives a standard
install process for software packages, to make installation easier
(ha!).  However, if you don't have Windows Installer (if you had a
version of Windows prior to Win2K, for instance) or a version of Windows
Installer prior to the one that NAV uses (yes, MS found bugs and made
improvements, so there's multiple versions of Windows Installer) then it
wants to install the latest version before it starts.  Unfortunately,
because the files that it upgrades are usually in use, this means
Windows has to restart before it's even started installing the software
you actually wanted.

The second time to remove the older version of NAV.  This is because (a)
running two antivirus programs will really slow your machine down and
(b) different versions of NAV use the same places in the registry and
the disk to store files, so it can't have two versions installed at the
same time.  Again, antivirus software is generally running when you try
to uninstall it, so it needs to restart.

The third time was post your install of NAV2002, and was so that your
system could start-up with NAV running.  The only wayto be sure you have
no viruses loaded into memory is to start the machine with NAV
installed, that way it's checking files from the moment Windows starts.

Liveupdate presents another problem.  Some files can be upgraded without
a restart (virus definition files, for instance), but if Symantec update
some of the actual program, then it needs to shut the program down,
replace the file and restart the program.  Which requires...a restart!
(Well, mostly.  I've used a few programs that can replace bits of code
while running, but apparently it's very hard to do)

The reason you may have been told about updates to other programs is
that liveupdate doesn't just cover NAV, but also PCAnywhere and many
other Symantec products.  So if you were running any other Symantec
programs, then it will have found updates to them too.

So, if you were already running the latest version of Windows Installer,
didn't have an old version of NAV and there were no updates to the code,
then you could expect a simple install with only one restart.

Whew.  Yes, it's a pain, but hopefully understanding what it was doing
will make the process a little less aggravating than before.  I think
that software manufacturers could make peoples lives a lot less
stressfull if they explained what was happening and the expected steps
you'd have to go through, so at least you weren't sitting in the dark
while strange things happened to your computer...

Andy D

URL --> http://www.Notzen.com/andrew/