1757 vs 1819 - cannot run except as administrator in Win7 (1757 could)

[carbuff]

Ok, this is aggravating the dickens out of me!

I've been running 6.1.0.1757 on my Win7 machine since it became available. I've been through the hassles of dealing with Win 7's UAC, and I have had 1757 working perfectly fine without running it as an administrator. I did this simply by changing the permissions for the 6.1.0.1757 installation folder such that my userid has Full Access Permissions.

That has worked perfectly, downloading the updated .inf files, etc.

Then comes along 1819. I installed it a couple of weeks ago, but have just started dealing with this issue this week. I attempted the exact same procedure that I was using with 1757 (on two different machines, so I know it worked for me), yet every time I launch 1819, I get an error message stating:

"QCharts failed to initialize, please reinstall. Application will be closed now. "

This comes after the username/password screen.

If I attempt to run 1819 as administrator, this doesn't happen. However, for whatever reason, when I do this on my multi-monitor system, my NVIDIA NView options don't appear, preventing me from maximizing to my entire 4 screen desktop. That's not an acceptable solution for me...

So today, I went back and reinstalled 1757. I went through my procedure of changing Permissions, and voila. 1757 works perfectly...

I then reinstalled 1819, went through the same procedure, and it worked. Hmm, thought I had fixed it. But I noticed that the DM was still running from my 1757 launch. So I exited everything, uninstalled 1757, and launched 1819 again. Sure enough, the problem is back.

So I've convinced myself that 1757 worked with this procedure, but something is broken related to this in 1819.

I don't need the Option charting capability of 1819, but at some point, there will be a forced upgrade or some other fix that I will need, so I want this issue resolved! I don't know why NView doesn't work when running as administrator, but I think that's a Win 7 issue, since I run another application in the same way, and the options are also not present for it either.

Other than running as administrator, does anyone else know of a way to get 1819 to run in Win7? I gone back through the old posts on this issue, and I haven't been able to find any other method...

And can the QCharts folks please comment on what was change/broken to make this Win7 UAC type issue worse? I thought you were working to improve this problem?

Grrr!!!!

[dcash]

Carbuff,

I had similar problems to you, but with 1757. I actually think it may have been related to either using Win7 Release Candidate, using Win7 64 bit, and/or the account I used to install QCharts.

I can say that I definitely have QCharts 1819 running successfully with a regular user account under the production version of Win7 Pro 64 bit. I still have to start up the program twice to get the CorpActs.inf file updated, but everything else seems fine.

On to the specifics. With 1757, I installed using the actual Administrator account instead of an account which is member of the Administrators group. I don’t know if this is an issue or not. When you load Win7, the default account it sets up is a member of the Administrators group. I used this account to install 1819 to a directory called QCharts 6.0.2.1819 in the C:\Program Files (x86) directory. I also gave read/write/modify permissions to members of the Users group for the QCharts install directory. I use a “regular user” account which is a member of the Users group to run QCharts

What caused me major problems before, but not now, was the updating of QCharts files in the C:\Windows directory; winros.ini to be specific. With my new install, this file is being “virtualized” properly and letting QCharts run. When it does not, you get the problems you cited where QCharts will not even finish loading.

As to virtualization, which is Microsoft’s Win7 way to handle applications that update operating system protected areas and directories, you need to check your user directory for the account that tries to execute QCharts to see if things are being virtualized.

Look at C:\Users\”your user name”\AppData\Local for a subdirectory called VirtualStore. Within that directory you should see \Program Files (x86)\QCharts 6.0.2.1819 or whatever directory into which you installed QCharts. That directory should contain several subdirectories and several files. These are copies of what QCharts updates when it starts. Even though all updated files should be “virtualized” here, QCharts still forces updates to files like ContinuumClient.ini, CorpActs.inf, and MktHours.inf to be written directly into the QCharts program directory. This is why you need read/write/modify permissions to this directory for the user account running QCharts.

You also should have a \Windows subdirectory in your VirtualStore directory that contains the virtualized copy of winros.ini. This is the thing that I think kept my QCharts from working before.

Hope this helps somewhat. I don’t claim to be a Windows or QCharts expert, I just know what has worked (and not worked) for me.

BTW, I also have not needed to specifically set application compatibility to WinXP SP3, although Win7 might be doing it automatically for me behind the scenes.

-Dan

[carbuff]

Hi Dan,

Thank you for the detailed reply! I finally had time to experiment with this, but instead of using 1819, I used the latest 1863.

Your method didn't seem that different than what I was trying, but it did trigger 1 thought which I believe solved my problem.

Previously, I was installing QCharts as a normal user. This time, I cleaned off all versions and ran the installer as the Administrator (right click, select "Run As Administrator"). After the install completed, I changed my program installation directory permissions to give user accounts full control.

And voila! I'm back in business.

So I think that I was forgetting to run the installer as Administrator last week when I was having trouble... Otherwise, I didn't do anything differently this time yet was successful!

Again, thank you for writing out your observations!
Bryan

[dcash]

Bryan,

You're most welcome if anything I said was helpful. Just to satisfy my curiosity, do you get "virtualized" directories under your ordinary user account for QCharts?

-Dan

[carbuff]

Dan,

I did poke through my C:\Users\”your user name”\AppData\Local directories and found the VirtualStore and Windows directories as you described. I did not change any permissions on those, when I looked, the user account had full permissions to them already...

Bryan