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New Software and Hardware Installation Problems
So, you just purchased a brand new software application for
your PC. Now you go to install it and it won’t install. Why won’t it
install? Well, there can be a number of reasons. One reason is that your
operating system might not have all of the latest updates of its system files.
Another reason might be that you don’t have enough hard disk space or enough
RAM if determined by the application. Usually having a slower speed processor
doesn’t cause install problems. Slower processors will just make the program
run slower. Still other reasons may be that your system doesn’t have all of
the latest and greatest in multimedia required, if you’re installing a game
application. To help alleviate a lot of these problems before you purchase that
next software application, take a very close look at the requirements for the
software on the box cover. Another really big problem is after you install that new
software onto your computer, you find that a lot of older applications quit
working or have errors popping up now and again. You’ve probably succumbed to
what developers refer to as DLL hell! This problem occurs more often than it
ever should but it seems that it will never go away. Supposedly DLL management
has been improved in Windows 2000, but I have yet to personally test this. So,
now your once functioning PC has taken a turn for the worse and now what should
you do? There are several solutions to this problem. One solution is may be to
uninstall the new application. However, this may damage your system even further
depending on the vendor of the application. Another is to try and download all
of the latest patches for your Windows version from the internet. This will
usually solve most problems. You could also try to freshen your Windows files by
reinstalling the operating system from disk. This solution will typically only
overwrite older versions with the most current one and leave any newer DLL files
alone. If this fails you may want to bite the bullet and upgrade to Windows 98
Second Edition. This will upgrade your system to the latest and greatest version
of the Windows 95/98 line. I had to take this route on my notebook after a
development tool corrupted my system. Well written applications will check the
version of your current Dynamic Link Library (DLL) files prior to overwriting
them on your system. However, not all developers or publishers use good
installation tools or don’t check the versions of files before overwriting
them on your system. This can cause major problems especially if the new
software overwrites your current system DLL files with an older version. This
problem breaks more computer systems than I care to know. Additionally, removing
a newly installed software application can inadvertently remove a normally used
system file from your PC if it updated it with a new version. This is another
frequent way that computer systems are rendered unusable as well. How can you be sure that these types of problems won’t
happen to you? Well, if the software asks during the installation whether or not
to backup your system files for you, do so. Additionally it’s a good idea to
use well-known and reputable companies when purchasing new software. However,
this does not guarantee in no way that your system won’t become dysfunctional.
I can still remember Microsoft Service Packs for Windows NT and Microsoft Office
that have done their share of damage to well running systems. Another recent
example is the installation of AOL 5.0 onto various systems and the problems
that it has caused. I have talked with several users that have had a variety of
problems after installing AOL 5.0 onto their systems. Just remember that
computers are very far from perfect and will never approach perfect. There are
simply too many things that can easily be accidentally on a system like deleting
one little file that will cause your system to come crashing to its knees. So
always make backups and be ready to reinstall your operating system if need be. Another problem that can occur with new software after it
has been installed is that the version you purchased may have been on the store
shelf for several months and it isn’t the latest version. It is rare that any
application on the market will be shipped without bugs. In fact it is nearly
impossible to create an application that doesn’t have some kind of bug or flaw
in it. With so many various configurations of hardware and software installed on
today’s PC’s, it takes work on the users part sometimes to make them all
work together. You may have IRQ conflicts, DLL conflicts and operating system
version problems. So the best thing to do is to always check on the software
vendor’s web site to see if they have an update available for their software.
More than likely they will or they will soon. So if you like to purchase a lot
of new software, I highly recommend that you have a fast connection to the
internet so you can always download the latest and greatest patches for your
software. I recently had to download 60MB patch to one of my applications and
that would have taken hours on a dial up connection. Thank you ADSL! On the hardware side of things, the Universal Serial Bus (USB)
standard was viewed as being the perfect plug and play solution to most of your
new hardware add-ons. Well it hasn’t quite delivered as was promised. Most of
the problems stem from the operating system that your PC runs. For example
Windows 95 prior to version B didn’t support USB. Windows 95 OSR2 or version B
added limited support for USB. It was not until Windows 98 that full USB support
was added and it was not until the release of Windows 98 Second Edition that
made even more improvements to this support. Windows 98 SE seems to support USB
fairly well. If you have Windows NT 4.0, you don’t have USB support at all.
However, Windows 2000 has added USB device support. As an example, I had an incident with my notebook which had
Windows 95 OSR2 installed on it and I connected an HP Scanjet using the USB port
to it and it would reboot my notebook sporadically. Sometimes it would work and
then at other times it would completely lock up my system. Then once I installed
Windows 98 SE onto my notebook the scanner worked as advertised. Many USB
devices that I had that worked most of the time worked better than before. So
remember if you are looking at using USB equipment on your PC check what version
of Windows you have before making your next purchase. This will save you several
hours of frustration. Rich Simpson is president of Mind’s Eye, Inc., a software development and IT consulting firm. He has a degree in aerospace engineering and has been designing and developing custom and commercial database applications since 1986. For more information or to download software demos visit their web site at http://www.mindseyeinc.com or send e-mail to rsimpson@mindseyeinc.com or call 636-282-2102. |
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