Digital BW, The Print

richard_h95050 wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> There seems to be lot's of problems and some pretty novel solutions 
> showing up with attempts to get QTR/GUI running ;>)
> 
> Thought I'd mention a couple of things here that may be of 
> assistance, though they may not be exactly the "solutions" you want 
> to hear. That being said...
> 
> 1. As an old hand at working through some of these same kinds of 
> issues, I'd like to pass on a really simple but fundamental tip that 
> I learned the very hard way (meaning, I no longer have any hair left 
> to pull out ;>)). That is: when all else fails, start with a 
> clean, "plain vanilla" system.

You can often clean up an older system, using some interesting tricks.

Before doing ANY of these things, do a full backup of your computers 
hard drive, never do anything to a working computer where you can't get 
easily back to where you started.

First problem .DLL files, do a search on your system, look for 
duplicates that live in seperate directories, look at the properties on 
each, and if they are duplicates of the same file, pick the newest one, 
and RENAME the rest, for example if we have XYZ123.DLL in windows syatem 
and in \Program Files\applicationx which is an older version, then 
rename it to XYZ123_dll.dup.  The problem is that Windows doesn't look 
at the version number, so if it loads XYZ123.DLL Version 1.0 and then 
has a request to load the DLL again, by a program that needs V3.4, it 
simply lets the second program crash and burn.

Not all operating systems are like this, Linux (and most unixes) for 
example has a tradition for naming DLLs (which it calls shared 
libraries, and end in .so) XYZ123-1.0.so and XYZ123-3.4.so can live 
happy together on the same machine, and get loaded separately.


> 
> 2. What does that mean? Well, when you do a lot of print production 
> work and you haven't been through all these "trials by fire" and 
> learned how to sort out these kinds of problems, you're best off 
> working with a system that is pretty much dedicated to post-
> processing and printing. i.e., clean OS install (your choice), bare 
> minimum of other applications installed (photoshop, imaging tools and 
> your printer RIP/drivers, etc.). The less the better!

Not only for print production, but any purpose, a windows installation 
has a life span of about 2 years, meaning every 2 years you should 
backup all your important files, blow everything away and reinstall from 
bare metal.  What gets really irritating are software upgrades that 
require the old software be installed already.  Then you have to install 
V2.0 to get your 3.0 upgrade to work, which means your clean install is 
already undone.

> 
> 3. Why? Well, when we have a machine we've been using for quite a 
> while that's full of all kinds of software and applications that have 
> been installing their "stuff" all over your system, you're working in 
> an unknown environment. It's like trying to get anywhere (you pick 
> the destination) when you don't know where you are -- even when us 
> guys break down and ask for directions, nobody can help very easily 
> because we don't know where we are to begin with ;>)
> 

There is no such thing as a generic Windows installation, many programs 
add lot of crap to the system, they may up or down grade important 
system files, whats sad about Windows software installs, is that it's up 
to the installer to know what to do, professional installers like 
Installshield and Wiseinstall will know what to do automagically, hand 
built installers often do not.  It's possible for a program to install 
XYZ123.DLL Version 1.0 over V3.4 which is needed for something else.

One solution, if you have a spare computer (that PII-200 with 32MB of 
RAM and the 2.0GB hard disk, that's ready for the garbage, will do 
nicely here).  Can be reinstalled from bare metal, simply as a print 
server.  Linux can be a solution for a lot of problems here, in that it 
can run headless (no monitor, keyboard or mouse) just with the RIP 
engine and the printer attached, running networking and samba so that 
your Windows PC can use it.

Hmmmmm, wonder how many people would be interested in a Linux 
distribution, that operated as just a print server????

W