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- WhereIsIt? version 3.02
- Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Robert Galle
- All Rights Reserved
-
- Last updated: August 1st 2000
-
-
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- ================================
-
- 1. Registration and purchase
- 2. Installation
- 3. Using the program
- 4. Troubleshooting
-
-
- 1. Registration and purchase
- ----------------------------
-
- Q: Why should I register?
- A: WhereIsIt? is not a free software, a lot of time and effort has been
- invested in making of this program. WhereIsIt? is released as shareware,
- allowing you to test it for a limited period of time (14 days). If you
- plan to continue using the program after that period, you are required to
- register. Evaluation version also has some limitations that are removed
- when the program is registered and unlocked.
-
- Q: How can I register WhereIsIt?
- A: The fastest way to register WhereIsIt is to use the online registration
- form and pay with your credit card. Orders are handled by DigiBuy, using a
- secure connection. You can expect to receive your registration details by
- e-mail within the next 24 hours. Regular mail delivery is also available.
- More details and link to online ordering form can be found on WhereIsIt's
- home page: http://www.whereisit-soft.com, in the help file, or in the
- Order.txt file, included in WhereIsIt package.
-
- Q: I don't have a credit card, or don't want to use it. Can I still register?
- A: Yes, some other ways are available, too. Most often used are sending a
- personal check (cheque, in some countries), or cash, by regular mail
- directly to the author's address. Both e-commerce vendors collecting
- orders for WhereIsIt, ShareIt! and DigiBuy, can accept either credit
- card orders (online and offline), as well as some other payment types,
- such as checks, bank/wire transfers, purchase and money orders etc.
- You can find more details in the Order.txt file, or you can consult the
- "How to Order" wizard in the Help menu, describing in detail all available
- options for registering WhereIsIt.
-
- Q: Do I need to re-register new versions of WhereIsIt?
- A: No, you don't have to, you license is valid for all future versions of
- WhereIsIt as well. If I am in any way forced to change this policy, it
- will not be done without discussing it with currently registered users
- first.
-
- Q: I'm a registered user of previous major WhereIsIt release, how can I
- unlock the current version.
- A: Each major WhereIsIt version uses its own registration system and a
- different set of license keys. When a new major version is released, all
- registered users are e-mailed a new registration package, which includes
- the appropriate license for the new version as well. If you are a
- registered user and you did not receive yours, please contact the author
- for more information, and don't forget to include your current serial
- number.
-
- Q: I'm working for a company and we would all like to use WhereIsIt. Are
- there site licenses available?
- A: Yes, site licenses are available for WhereIsIt. When placing an order,
- just include the appropriate number of licenses in your purchase, and
- select that you would like to have them issues as a single site license
- for specified number of users. Discounts are available for purchases of
- 5 or more licenses at once. You can find more details about placing
- orders and pricing in the Order.txt file.
-
-
- 2. Installation
- ---------------
-
- Q: Should I uninstall previous version of WhereIsIt? before installing a new
- one?
- A: This is not necessary if you will install new version in the same folder.
- Just run the setup program, and program will upgrade itself. If you would
- like to install program to different location, then uninstalling is
- recommended. Please note that your catalogs will not be deleted while
- uninstalling, but you will have to configure the program again since old
- settings will be removed.
-
- Q: How can I uninstall WhereIsIt?
- A: Just open the Control Panel, select "Add/Remove programs" option, and
- double-click WhereIsIt's entry on the list. If you have created program
- group for WhereIsIt when installing, you can achieve the same by clicking
- the "Uninstall WhereIsIt" icon in WhereIsIt's group.
-
- Q: Can I be notified about new versions?
- A: Yes, you can, if you have a working e-mail address. A free mailing list is
- available for all WhereIsIt users - notifications about new versions and
- current development news are posted there. You can add or remove yourself
- from WhereIsIt Mailing List at any time from WhereIsIt's home page,
- located at: http://www.whereisit-soft.com .
-
-
- 3. Using the program
- --------------------
-
- Q: Does WhereIsIt run on Windows 3.1, or Windows NT 3.5x?
- A: No, sorry, WhereIsIt? relies on technology not yet provided with these
- operating systems. You will need at least Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0
- to run WhereIsIt.
-
- Q: How can change the order of disks, displayed in left tree pane?
- A: The same way as you would change order of files or folders - by sorting
- them in the right pane. Select the parent catalog entry in the tree view,
- so your disks are displayed on the right side, and sort them by clicking
- the appropriate column header. Changes in disk order will be reflected on
- tree view, too.
- If you are using WhereIsIt 3.00 or newer, you can also use drag&drop to
- manually reorder your disks on the list, or your can use the Ctrl+Alt+
- <Up> or <Down> to move selected disk(s) on the list.
-
- Q: Can I delete specific files or folders from catalog if I don't need them?
- A: Not in the older WhereIsIt 1.xx, but version 2.00 and newer do support
- such modifications, too. Older WhereIsIt 1.xx honors the data integrity
- in catalog, always assuring that data as stated in catalog resembles as
- much as possible the real data on your media. The only exception are
- hidden files, or special items like Recycle Bin, that can be set to be
- skipped during the disk scan. Version 2.0 will allow you to freely remove
- any selected item from catalog, although overusing this feature is not
- recommended.
-
- Q: How can one print an alphabetical list of all files in the catalog?
- A: The easiest way to do that is to use searching in combination with report
- generator. First, you have to get a list of all items that you would like
- to print - searching for all files with "*.*" mask should do the trick in
- this case. Sort resulting list by file names, and click on report
- generator button. Be sure to selected the "Print data in list 'as is',
- no sorting" option, in order to preserve items order as they are in search
- results list (nicely alphabetically sorted). Just select the columns you
- want in report, and that's it.
- Searching in combination with report generator is a very powerful and
- adjustable tool for making all kinds of reports. You can do a lot with it,
- but you will need to get a bit creative. For some more examples you can
- check out the "How to..." section in the help file.
-
- Q: Can I export my database to be used in some other program?
- A: Exporting cataloged data is a part of report generator, meaning you can
- select yourself which data and in what details will get exported. Report
- generator supports a few different export destinations, including text
- files (regular ASCII files, tab-separated, or comma-separated), MS Excel
- tables, RTF documents, HTML documents,...
-
- Q: I have set the Description Assistant to import text files as descriptions,
- but this doesn't work.
- A: Auto-importing descriptions is not what Description Assistant (DA) does.
- DA is an interactive tool, designed to help you when manually editing your
- descriptions. For more details about DA, consult the help file and be sure
- to read the next question, too.
- A plugin to import user-defined text files as description as also available,
- however due to some considerations with this functionality it is not
- distributed as a part of WhereIsIt and is not officially supported. You can
- download it as a separate package from program's home page.
-
- Q: How can I get the program to import my own descriptions during disk scan,
- or add support for importing thumbnails from new types of files?
- A: WhereIsIt 2.xx and never address this problem with description plugins,
- working over Description API. Basically, it is a way to provide users with
- ability to include or even write their own description plugins, extending
- program's ability to handle other, currently unsupported description and
- thumbnail sources. For example, if you would like to import your *.txt
- files as descriptions, you could write a simple description plugin for this
- task. It will be plugin's responsibility, however, to provide the text to be
- used for description in any way it can. As far as WhereIsIt is concerned, it
- will just say to your plugin during the disk scan: "Hey, you said you can
- get me description for parent folder from *.txt files, so here is a folder
- with some .txt files in it, let me have up to 32 kB of description text then".
- The full documentation and a sample about DescAPI and writing description
- plugins is available in the <WhereIsIt>\DescAPI folder.
-
-
- 4. Troubleshooting
- ------------------
-
- Q: Icons in Settings dialog and some icons in the main menu are missing. I'm
- using a Matrox display card.
- A: There is a known bug in some Matrox video drivers (released around April
- 1999) that can cause some images to be missing in WhereIsIt. It is recommended
- to use the latest *certified* video drivers. Reportedly the Matrox PowerDesk
- v5.13 display driver suite an newer no longer exhibit missing icons in
- WhereIsIt. A similar situations may apply to other video drivers or video
- cards as well.
-
- Q: My computer locks up when I try to display the Settings dialog, and there
- are no icons visible in main menu's Settings options.
- A: Please make sure you are using the latest final release of your video
- drivers - this is a known problem with an older beta version of ATI Rage
- Pro drivers. It may occur with other video cards as well. For ATI Rage
- Pro based video cards, the latest video drivers were reported to solve the
- problem.
-
- Q: I have problems with scanning certain media, what can I do about it?
- A: Such problems are usually a result of damaged media that can't be read
- correctly (a scratched CD-ROM, for example), as well as of damaged,
- corrupted or otherwise invalid files on the media. In case of damaged
- media there is not much program can do about it, but with corrupted files
- you can temporarily turn off some advanced scanning features like browsing
- inside archive files and description plugins. You should be able to catalog
- any readable media, in worse case by turning off all advanced features and
- let the program do just a simple scan of media contents.
-
- Q: No descriptions are imported when scanning my media, what can I do?
- A: Check if description modules are loaded and enabled, and check if
- description plugins are enabled and in suitable priority order. Also, make
- sure that you are not using any option that is reserved for special cases
- only - for example, the "Import existing descriptions from other disks in
- catalog" should be disabled by default as it requires a lot of resources
- and can even cause problems or instability during scanning.
-
- Q: The CDDB plugin doesn't seem to be working, only generic description are
- imported.
- A: There are two plugins that can handle Audio CD tracks, the CDDB plugin and
- generic Audio CD plugin. Make sure that CDDB plugin has assigned more priority
- than Audio CD plugin, or CDDB will never get to be used in the first place.
- Generic descriptions can also be assigned if CDDB plugin was not successful
- in retrieving descriptions - because of there is no Internet connection,
- your audio CD is being used by some other application and CDDB plugin can't
- access it, or just because it is not listed in CDDB database or results
- returned were not reliable. Please also note the fact that if you are
- updating disk image in catalog, existing descriptions are always kept unless
- specifically instructed otherwise.
-
- Q: I can't get the program to accept my license key file.
- A: Make sure that your key file is named "License.key" if you are using
- WhereIsIt 3.xx, or "WhereIsIt.key", if using WhereIsIt 2.xx. The key file
- must be located in the same folder as program's .exe file (NOT, for example,
- in the same group on your desktop where you have a shortcut to WhereIsIt...)
-
- Q: I think I have found a bug. Where and how can I submit reports about found
- problems?
- A: You can e-mail description about any problem you find to the author
- (bug.report@whereisit-soft.com). Please be sure to check if you are using
- the latest version of program, problem may already be fixed at that time.
- When describing your problem, try to include as much information as
- possible for author to be able to repeat the problem - reproducing the
- error is the first and most important step to solution. Please also
- include a short description of your computer, and WhereIsIt and OS version
- that you are using.
-
- Q: Can I make a suggestion for a new feature?
- A: Sure, new suggestions are always welcome. All of them will be at least
- considered, and many have made it into the program already.
-
- ---
- END OF DOCUMENT