i believe that at some point user-intervention is required. users will need to 'tell the system' where the EXE (if running across the network) and the DATA resides. i think u will always run into issues such as non-standard drive letters for mapped drives to the server, users not knowing the \\servername and having to hunt it down, and others. although there are some people here who do amazing things with WSH and installshield, but personally, i dont think its that big a deal to have the user "find" the server machine and data path.



>I just wish I could do something easy! Ideally workstation setup would just install the runtimes and ask me where the exe is so it could create a shortcut and I'm done. (Assuming I installed the exe on the server and am willing to live with the consequences of it, if any. We run loads of apps from the server with good performance.)
>
>All of these suggestions are good but I'm still confused on how to find the
>data. Somewhere I have to tell the exe where the data is. How is the workstation setup going to do that?
>
>>i suggest building two install packages. one for the server and one for workstations. Build the workstation SETUP.EXE and make it a file that the server install routine installs. Just another file that the SERVER routine installs. So the user runs the SERVER install and the directory structure on the SERVER could look like:
>>
>>MyApp
>>MyApp\Data
>>MyApp\Workstion\Setup.exe
>>
>>Then have the workstation users run the MyApp\Workstion\Setup.exe file to get the activex, runtimes, and everything else they need on to their PC. I would also go w/ a starter app so that the EXE is local.
>>
>>
>>>Also how would I keep someone from overwriting the tables when they did a workstation install?
>>>
>>>>Joe,
>>>>
>>>>Why don't you want the .exe installed on the local workstation? You'll get (slightly?) better performance, and it would be easier to distribute updates...if you employ a launcher (see Nick's in downloads) an update can be deployed without kicking users out of the application. And without any additional action by each user, other than exiting the app and going back in.
>>>>
>>>>>I'll try to explain better. I give someone a CD with my app on it. They are going to install it on a network so that multiple users can use it. They run setup.exe and install the application exe and dbf tables to
>>>>>c:\program files\apps\appx. They share the directory c:\program files\ and now need to get other users computers set up. The user maps a drive "o:" to \\server\share. They need a way to install the runtimes,ocxs, and shortcuts. They don't want to run the same setup they just ran to do the network install. This would reinstall the exe and tables. So I assume I would make a new setup.exe for this. Named workstationsetup.exe, it would run and copy the runtimes, copy and register ocx's and create a shortcut that points to a drive mapped as o:. Installshield needs to create a folder on the LOCAL workstation off of "program files" called appx. In it they need a shortcut pointing to o:\apps\appx.exe. When the user is running workstationsetup.exe how can they create \program files\appx\appxshortcut and set the target of the shortcut to o:\apps\appx.exe
>>>>>
>>>>>