BorlandTalk.com Borland discussion newsgroups   Archives   FAQ   Search   Memberlist   Usergroups   Register   Profile   Log in to check your private messages   Log in  re-installing Delphi Application          BorlandTalk.com Forum Index -> comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc View previous topic :: View next topic   Author Message John Dammeyer Guest Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 9:19 am    Post subject: re-installing Delphi Application Hi all, I know this isn't a 'strict' Delphi question but perhaps someone here has the answer or at least can point me to a usenet group that does. I've developed this Delphi app that will run on an embedded PC104 system with a touch screen and A/D board. Connection to the outside world is via a USB JumpDrive or USB printer. Internally the unit has a Compact Flash 512MB card for the hard drive. Once a unit returns from the field, the managers would like to 'clean' the system. That means they'd like to run some sort of batch file or script that deletes all the temporary files and reconfigures the system the way it was before it was shipped out. They also have 50 units with virgin WIN98SE and the JumpDrive drivers that need initial configuring. That means no network support and nothing on the desktop that someone could run while the application is starting. The Deplhi application needs to register a number of ActiveX controls and install the DLLs in the proper directory. That's pretty easy using Installshield. But what seems to be the simplest would be to force WIN98SE into recovering a backup of the correctly configured system registry. A backup that is copied over from the USB JumpDrive. As long as the batch application copied over all the correct files to the proper directories it wouldn't matter what sort of changes had been made to the system, a replacement registry would return the system to it's original 'configured' settup. Alternatively, perhaps creating a system recovery disk image that is run from the JumpDrive? Has anyone ever done this? Suggestions? Reference books? Different Usenet group? Thank you. John Dammeyer Back to top J French Guest Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 10:24 am    Post subject: Re: re-installing Delphi Application On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:19:03 GMT, [email]johnd (AT) STRIP (DOT) autoartisans.com[/email] (John Dammeyer) wrote: Quote: Hi all, I know this isn't a 'strict' Delphi question but perhaps someone here has the answer or at least can point me to a usenet group that does. I've developed this Delphi app that will run on an embedded PC104 system with a touch screen and A/D board. Connection to the outside world is via a USB JumpDrive or USB printer. Internally the unit has a Compact Flash 512MB card for the hard drive. Once a unit returns from the field, the managers would like to 'clean' the system. That means they'd like to run some sort of batch file or script that deletes all the temporary files and reconfigures the system the way it was before it was shipped out. They also have 50 units with virgin WIN98SE and the JumpDrive drivers that need initial configuring. That means no network support and nothing on the desktop that someone could run while the application is starting. The Deplhi application needs to register a number of ActiveX controls and install the DLLs in the proper directory. That's pretty easy using Installshield. But what seems to be the simplest would be to force WIN98SE into recovering a backup of the correctly configured system registry. A backup that is copied over from the USB JumpDrive. As long as the batch application copied over all the correct files to the proper directories it wouldn't matter what sort of changes had been made to the system, a replacement registry would return the system to it's original 'configured' settup. I am not sure about Jump Drives however I have recently run into a similar problem on a totally different Win98 device The Registry is stored in two files both in c:windows They are USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT When the machine is booting you can insert something in AUTOEXEC.BAT that can copy over those files - when 98 is fully loaded those files cannot be written to, which is just as well as they are cached up in RAM I think you may be able to do everything you want from a batch file invoked by AUTOEXEC.BAT and only triggered if a 'signal file' is present Note that this could create problems if you send out new AX controls Also I don't think you need to bother with InstallShield - you can RegSvr32 stuff yourself there is even a sneaky way to do it from within code Quote: Alternatively, perhaps creating a system recovery disk image that is run from the JumpDrive? If the JumpDrive is what I think it is, and is run through the USB, then you need Win98 up and running to access the JumpDrive, but by then it would be hard to run the recovery stuff You could have a routine that copies the image to the machine, patches AUTOEXEC.BAT and then restarts the machine - when the machine is in DOS mode you can get up to some mischief something like Ghost - or even use Int26h yourself .... but to restore an image from the same drive that the image is on is tricky ... If you could partition your internal RAM card it would make things easier. Also ... IME you need some sort of ROM based bootstrap so you can configure a totally naked machine - that is how we did something similar on a precursor to the PC104 design It would be interesting to know more about your hardware Quote: Has anyone ever done this? Suggestions? Reference books? Different Usenet group? Ghost, Acronis, PowerQuest DriveImage - there are others about Quote: Thank you. John Dammeyer Back to top Jeremy Collins Guest Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 11:41 am    Post subject: Re: re-installing Delphi Application John Dammeyer wrote: Quote: Once a unit returns from the field, the managers would like to 'clean' the system. That means they'd like to run some sort of batch file or script that deletes all the temporary files and reconfigures the system the way it was before it was shipped out. They also have 50 units with virgin WIN98SE and the JumpDrive drivers that need initial configuring. That means no network support and nothing on the desktop that someone could run while the application is starting. I wonder if you could use Ghost (or DriveImage) to make a copy of a "clean" install, and just overwrite the whole thing when it gets back...? -- jc Remove the -not from email Back to top AlanGLLoyd Guest Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 3:08 pm    Post subject: Re: re-installing Delphi Application In article <401a1f66.141664122 (AT) news (DOT) islandnet.com>, [email]johnd (AT) STRIP (DOT) autoartisans.com[/email] (John Dammeyer) writes: Quote: Alternatively, perhaps creating a system recovery disk image that is run from the JumpDrive? Or a disk image copying machine - I would think that they were not that expensive (especially comparing prices with the time cost of engineers doing it some other way). Alan Lloyd [email]alanglloyd (AT) aol (DOT) com[/email] Back to top John Dammeyer Guest Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 4:43 pm    Post subject: Re: re-installing Delphi Application That you for the suggestions. However, they have tried Ghost and it appears unreliable works less than 50% of the time. The internal Flash Drive which holds the OS and all the applications is behind 32 socket head screws that are held tight with locktite. It's not an option to take them apart on a regular basis. The Ghost experience left them with three flash cards that needed to be removed, reformatted and the OS re-installed. The WIN98 Help file says there can be up to 5 backups of the Registry so perhaps just replacing the autoexec.bat with a special version from the jumpdrive dongle. This autoexec.bat could delete the registry files. That might work. I'll give it a try. John [email]alanglloyd (AT) aol (DOT) com[/email] (AlanGLLoyd) wrote: Quote: In article <401a1f66.141664122 (AT) news (DOT) islandnet.com>, [email]johnd (AT) STRIP (DOT) autoartisans.com[/email] (John Dammeyer) writes: Alternatively, perhaps creating a system recovery disk image that is run from the JumpDrive? Or a disk image copying machine - I would think that they were not that expensive (especially comparing prices with the time cost of engineers doing it some other way). Alan Lloyd [email]alanglloyd (AT) aol (DOT) com[/email] Back to top John Dammeyer Guest Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 5:21 pm    Post subject: Re: re-installing Delphi Application [email]erewhon (AT) nowhere (DOT) com[/email] (J French) wrote: Quote: The Registry is stored in two files both in c:windows They are USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT Thanks. Quote: When the machine is booting you can insert something in AUTOEXEC.BAT that can copy over those files - when 98 is fully loaded those files cannot be written to, which is just as well as they are cached up in RAM I think you may be able to do everything you want from a batch file invoked by AUTOEXEC.BAT and only triggered if a 'signal file' is present Perhaps a delsys.bat file called from autoexec.bat. If it's there then it would delete the two .dat files. In Autoexec.bat, after calling delsys.bat it would then delete delsys.bat. Quote: Note that this could create problems if you send out new AX controls Also I don't think you need to bother with InstallShield - you can RegSvr32 stuff yourself there is even a sneaky way to do it from within code Do you know if the RegSvr32 modifies the registry? If it does, then writing an app that does my specific registry entries is trivial. Quote: Alternatively, perhaps creating a system recovery disk image that is run from the JumpDrive? If the JumpDrive is what I think it is, and is run through the USB, then you need Win98 up and running to access the JumpDrive, but by then it would be hard to run the recovery stuff That's what I was thinking too after I pondered a bit more. Can't run the USB as a drive till windows is up so it can't really be a boot drive. Quote: You could have a routine that copies the image to the machine, patches AUTOEXEC.BAT and then restarts the machine - when the machine is in DOS mode you can get up to some mischief something like Ghost - or even use Int26h yourself ... but to restore an image from the same drive that the image is on is tricky ... Ghost inadvertantly trashed a couple of the internal flash cards and so then the boxes needed to be taken apart and the cards pulled and reformatted. That took them a while since the card wasn't recognized so it wouldn't format.... catch-22. Quote: If you could partition your internal RAM card it would make things easier. Also ... IME you need some sort of ROM based bootstrap so you can configure a totally naked machine - that is how we did something similar on a precursor to the PC104 design That's a good point. I'll have my customer contact the hardware manufacturer. Quote: It would be interesting to know more about your hardware It's a Pentium 566MHz with a 640x480 LCD display in a waterproof aluminium box held closed with some 32 screws that are locktite glued. There are three water resistant plugs. One for AC power. Plug it in and the system starts up. One for the 4-20ma intrinsically safe internal module and one with a cover that has a USB connector inside. It's kind of a sophisticated chart recorder. One stripchart (ActiveX) is from GlobalMajic (along with a button ActiveX control) and the other I had to write from scratch in order to meet the customer specifications. The A/D is a 16 bit custom card that shoves data into an 8K FIFO at 1KHz. That gives me the freedom to pull the data out at the PC end on their 55ms Timer ticks without worrying about the data integrity. I'm not allowed to say much about the actual application but I accumulate up to 2 minutes of data and then save that into a fixed record size database. (Yes, it gets big and later on I'll rewrite it to compress the data). The index of the database holds some key information from the acquired data and that's what is plotted on the GlobalMajic Stripchart. John Quote: Has anyone ever done this? Suggestions? Reference books? Different Usenet group? Ghost, Acronis, PowerQuest DriveImage - there are others about Thank you. John Dammeyer Back to top J French Guest Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2004 9:32 am    Post subject: Re: re-installing Delphi Application Inline :- On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 17:21:12 GMT, [email]johnd (AT) STRIP (DOT) autoartisans.com[/email] (John Dammeyer) wrote: Quote: erewhon (AT) nowhere (DOT) com (J French) wrote: The Registry is stored in two files both in c:windows They are USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT Thanks. When the machine is booting you can insert something in AUTOEXEC.BAT that can copy over those files - when 98 is fully loaded those files cannot be written to, which is just as well as they are cached up in RAM I think you may be able to do everything you want from a batch file invoked by AUTOEXEC.BAT and only triggered if a 'signal file' is present Perhaps a delsys.bat file called from autoexec.bat. If it's there then it would delete the two .dat files. In Autoexec.bat, after calling delsys.bat it would then delete delsys.bat. Not delete - COPY c:windowsuser.hld c:windowsuser.dat Here is something :- cdwindows c:windowscommandattrib -R -H -S SYSTEM.DAT c:windowscommandattrib -R -H -S USER.DAT IF NOT EXIST SYSTEM.HLD copy SYSTEM.DAT SYSTEM.HLD IF NOT EXIST USER.HLD copy USER.DAT USER.HLD copy SYSTEM.HLD SYSTEM.DAT copy USER.HLD USER.DAT cd Quote: Note that this could create problems if you send out new AX controls Also I don't think you need to bother with InstallShield - you can RegSvr32 stuff yourself there is even a sneaky way to do it from within code Do you know if the RegSvr32 modifies the registry? If it does, then writing an app that does my specific registry entries is trivial. It most certainly does modify the Registry - probably easier and safer to re-register the controls Quote: Alternatively, perhaps creating a system recovery disk image that is run from the JumpDrive? If the JumpDrive is what I think it is, and is run through the USB, then you need Win98 up and running to access the JumpDrive, but by then it would be hard to run the recovery stuff That's what I was thinking too after I pondered a bit more. Can't run the USB as a drive till windows is up so it can't really be a boot drive. EXACTLY ! The old chicken and egg problem Quote: You could have a routine that copies the image to the machine, patches AUTOEXEC.BAT and then restarts the machine - when the machine is in DOS mode you can get up to some mischief something like Ghost - or even use Int26h yourself ... but to restore an image from the same drive that the image is on is tricky ... Ghost inadvertantly trashed a couple of the internal flash cards and so then the boxes needed to be taken apart and the cards pulled and reformatted. That took them a while since the card wasn't recognized so it wouldn't format.... catch-22. Nasty - I wonder whether the Flash cards are running under some form of TrueFlash (TFFS) - that could explain it Hmm ... I wonder how you managed to run Ghost ? - maybe a later version that does not insist on DOS mode - or via some network connection It would be nice if the cards could be easily removed Quote: If you could partition your internal RAM card it would make things easier. Also ... IME you need some sort of ROM based bootstrap so you can configure a totally naked machine - that is how we did something similar on a precursor to the PC104 design That's a good point. I'll have my customer contact the hardware manufacturer. It is also just possible that there is a DOS driver for the JumpDrive Also, such machines probably have a boot sequence of some sort ( a bit like booting from Floppy if present ) Quote: It would be interesting to know more about your hardware It's a Pentium 566MHz with a 640x480 LCD display in a waterproof aluminium box held closed with some 32 screws that are locktite glued. There are three water resistant plugs. One for AC power. Plug it in and the system starts up. One for the 4-20ma intrinsically safe internal module and one with a cover that has a USB connector inside. Nice Quote: It's kind of a sophisticated chart recorder. One stripchart (ActiveX) is from GlobalMajic (along with a button ActiveX control) and the other I had to write from scratch in order to meet the customer specifications. The A/D is a 16 bit custom card that shoves data into an 8K FIFO at 1KHz. That gives me the freedom to pull the data out at the PC end on their 55ms Timer ticks without worrying about the data integrity. I'm not allowed to say much about the actual application but I accumulate up to 2 minutes of data and then save that into a fixed record size database. (Yes, it gets big and later on I'll rewrite it to compress the data). The index of the database holds some key information from the acquired data and that's what is plotted on the GlobalMajic Stripchart. I follow - sounds interesting I work on touch screen systems for selling Duty Free onboard aircraft - we have been through a few machines since I started in 1990 - once we built our own - it cost a fortune and never really worked that well - power problems mainly Back to top Dragon Lord Guest Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2004 3:26 am    Post subject: Re: re-installing Delphi Application "John Dammeyer" <johnd (AT) STRIP (DOT) autoartisans.com> wrote Quote: erewhon (AT) nowhere (DOT) com (J French) wrote: If the JumpDrive is what I think it is, and is run through the USB, then you need Win98 up and running to access the JumpDrive, but by then it would be hard to run the recovery stuff That's what I was thinking too after I pondered a bit more. Can't run the USB as a drive till windows is up so it can't really be a boot drive. That must suck, my bios has support for USB devices. I have booted from a USB drive once, but I normally don't. 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