Auto Run & File Servers

[John McCoy]

Help
I have been running Auto Run CD's that I have created without any problems on PC's..
But I am having trouble when the PC is connected to a network or file server.

The CD starts up ok... I can access all pages on the CD.... BUT...I Cannot get any file to open e.g. PDF documents will not launch.

Can anyone help on this matter?????????

Regards
John

[Mark]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

Hi,

Are you receiving any errors? What happens when you try to access an external file?

You are probably having problems with your paths, I'd suggest that you read this knowledgebase article: http://www.indigorose.com/kb/BuildingAndPreviewing.pdf

mark.

[John McCoy]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

Mark

I receive no error messages when I try to access an external file.It just does not launch the file....... As I said it works fine on PC's ..but not on networked PC's.

But it might go back to using %srcdrv%.... I think I have to use %srcdir%

[Jito463]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

I've always used %SrcDir%, since I run the menu off my computer as well as off CD. Is there a way to set it to default to %SrcDir%? It's kind of annoying having to always change %SrcDrv% to %SrcDir%. Thanks in advance.

[John McCoy]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

Mark

I changed all the %srcdrv% to %srcdir% ... still the same problem!

The Menu launches and I can access all pages..when I open a file (pdf) the Acrobat Reader starts & opens the file.

Then if I close that file (leaving Acrobat running) and try to open another PDF file... nothing happens.

BUT.. if I close Acrobat down... and then open another file... Acrobat launches and the file opens.....then the same problem.

As I said, this only happens when I place the CD in a PC's ROM that is connected to a Network..

All works just fine on a stand alone PC's...

John

[tbybee]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

What version of the Acrobat Reader are you running? I know the early versions of 4.0 had a bug with this very thing. You could open up Windows Explorer and click on a .pdf file but it wouldn't open it giving an error as if the file wasn't there. Then if you go into Acrobat and try to open the file from there, then it would work fine. Plus, you could then go into the same directory using Windows Explorer and all files would now open. Very weird. I would suggest you use the latest reader, v.5.0. You may also want to consider actually running the Reader from the cd instead of accessing the user's version on their computer. This will likely cut down on some errors too.

Keep us posted.

Good Luck,

Tony

[This message has been edited by tbybee (edited 03-21-2002).]

[John McCoy]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

Thanks Tony

I am using Acrobat Reader 5.

Yes it is weird... but I am also going to have our IT experts look at the problem.

I have Acrobat installed on the AutoRun Cd, so I install this onto customers PC.

Will keep everyone posted

Thanks again
John

[tbybee]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

One thing I was saying about running directly from the cd, is not to necessarily run the Install from the cd to the user's hard drive. But, to run the actual Acrobat Reader from the cd. I've done this on a few occasions that I needed the .pdf file to be opened in Reader+search. There's no way to know the exact version of the reader the user has, so I just put it all on the cd and that's what the file is viewed in. This IS allowed by Adobe and the license agreement which is not the case for some other software.

You might give this a shot to see if it works.

Tony

[John McCoy]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

Tony
Thanks for your reply.

How do you make Acrobat Reader run from the CD.

Don't you need to have other windows "dll" files running for it to work.

Thanks
John

[John McCoy]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

Mark

Have you had any luck tracking down this problem??

John

[Mark]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

Hi John,

From your description it sounds like this is a problem with the way that Adobe Acrobat is functioning on the networked PC's. Especially since it will always work properly as long as the user closes Acrobat down each time.

You might try setting up an EXECUTE PROGRAM action that will launch Acrobat and then pass it the full path to your PDF document as a command line parameter.

mark.

[tbybee]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

I saw some instructions quite some time ago on the Adobe website about running the reader from the cd. When I've done this, I just copied my whole Acrobat Reader directory onto the cd in a reader folder. Everything worked just fine by doing this. This allowed me to distribute the Reader+Search to all users so they could search across all .pdf's on the cd. After I did this, I tested it on a machine that did not have any version of the reader so I would get an accurate assessment of the application running.

Good Luck

Tony

[John McCoy]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

I have been in touch with Adobe ......and the problem lies with using Adobe Reader on PC's that are networked.

It seems that all sorts of problems manifest in this situation.. so there we are... don't use Reader when you know your program is going on a networked PC.

Thanks for all the help

John

[tbybee]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

This sounds very strange to me. Can you explain what type of problems you might encounter related to the networked pc's? Are you talking about if the cd created was placed on a network such as a cd tower that all the networked pc's could access? If so, I certainly see a lot of problems with that. But, if you're only talking about running a cd specifically on a single machine that happens to be on a network, there's absolutely no problems.

Please clarify if you can.

Thanks,

Tony

[John McCoy]

Re: Auto Run & File Servers

Tony

There is a problem with all pdf files that you try and access on Networked PC's.

Even though I thought it was a problem related to the CD program I created, it is a general Reader problem.

As an example: Our computers at work run from a file server.

With Acrobat Reader installed on C: on the hard drive of the PC.

Open Reader... and open a pdf document... no problems..... close that file.

Find another pdf file and this time don't open it by ..file.. Open etc
Double click on the file... does not open.

Problem with me is... all the files I want to open are accessed from different pages (menu)on the CD.

The CD has been designed for the user to choose the correct page in the program, then open the documents they require from that page.

Acrobat know about the problem.... and you would think they would have a fix for it.... but no... just bad luck.

So I will have to close and open Reader every time ... but only when PC is networked.

Regards

John