Detecting presence of program in registry

[Mark]

Re: Detecting presence of program in registry

Hi,
If you want information on how to AutoPlay Power Point presentations please follow this link: http://www.indezine.com/products/pow...pautorun.html. Using this method you can AutoPlay Power Point presentations on any system if they have Power Point or not.

mark.

[WkEndDad]

Re: Detecting presence of program in registry

Can you suggest a better way of checking to see if program is installed?

Originally a friend was putting together a Powerpoint Slideshow and wanted it to autoplay when inserted into the CD drive.

But if Powerpoint, or the Powerpoint Viewer, was not installed it would not run. He wanted autoplay to display a screen to allow the PowerpOint viewer to be installed if it wasn't detected on the host system.

Is there a better way of polling the host system to determine if it meets the requirements for the program?

[Mark]

Re: Detecting presence of program in registry

Hi,
What you should do is:
1) Project Startup Event -> Read From Registry Action:
Name: %RegVar%
Default: FALSE
Main Key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Sub Key: *.PDF
True If Exists: CHECKED.
2) Page Open Event, on the page where the install Acrobat button would appear -> Hide Object:
Object Name: Acrobat Button's Name
Boolean Condition:
%RegVar% = FALSE.
That's it, now if the *.PDF key exists in the register the Install Acrobat button will not be displayed.
Although this works, I would caution you on using this; it is usually a better idea to simple give the user the option to install Acrobat if they want. Say for example your user deleted Acrobat off of their system without uninstalling, the registry key would still exist, but the user would not have Acrobat on their system. Now using the above method the user would not even have the chance to install Acrobat.

mark.

[WkEndDad]

In v2.0 there was a clear description on how to use a programs extension listed in the registry to determine if the program was installed. In the example they used the *.PDF extension to determine if Adobe Acrobat was installed.
If the menu did not detect the *.PDF extension a text box appeared asking the user if they wished to install it.
If the extension was found a listing of the *.pdf files was seen.
I cannot find this description in the v3.0 User Guide or the Help file.
Can anyone explain how to do this check?

Thanks