Installation to USB Key

[Brownlee]

Is there a way to install TextPipe Pro to a USB key, without having to depend on the Windows registry?

I have to run at a client site where we can't install our tools on the computer we must use, but are allowed to run applications from our own USB keys (flash drive) or external USB disk drives.

Applications that keep their configuration information locally run very well, but applications that depend on keeping all their configuration information in the Windows registry do not work well or at all. I could not find any installation options to support this.

TextPipe Pro "almost" runs from a USB key, but not quite.

[DataMystic Support]

Hi there,

Are applications prevented from writing to the registry (and abort), or do registry operations silently fail? We'd be interested in working through this with you - please drop us an email.

[franknbeans]

I, too would have use for such a feature if it was available

[Brownlee]

The applications that work seem to just run with no problem.

Applications that don't either come up crippled or provoke a Dr. Watson response to a critical error. Textpipe gets this response from the system.

I can't run regedit - an administrative lock message comes up.

My guess is that Windows API calls to the registry fail, and that most applications don't handle this unexpected failure return value safely. For apps where all the API calls come out of one DLL, the DLL dies but the rest of the app stays up in a partly functional status.

Just a quick look on another system makes it seem like TextPipe really does not keep a lot of information in the Windows registry, so writing a registry replacement DLL or API to a local configuration data store should be fairly easy.

I hope that you can come up with a new release that has a USB install option or that detects the failed registry call and prompts for another location to use for a local key store. Thanks.

[DataMystic Support]

Ok - we'll certainly start investigating it. Can you please drop me an email if you're interested in testing it?

[Brownlee]

Ok - we'll certainly start investigating it. Can you please drop me an email if you're interested in testing it?

Absolutely interested.

[franknbeans]

I may be wrong but this looks like it installs many keys to the registry, especially HKCU keys. There seems to be a substantial dependence on the registry with HKCU and HKCR although the dependence on the SystemFolder is negligible.

[DataMystic Support]

Yes, we store most user settings in HKCU in accordance with Microsoft's recommendations, and we also use HKCR for file extensions.