Vista vs ReNamer

AubinWan · 2007-05-09 21:42

Does ReNamer work on Vista? I love ReNamer and am thinking of going to Vista. Thanks.

den4b · 2007-05-10 10:25

As far as I know - it works perfectly! But I never tested it my-self.

There is only one minor issue which has been just discovered by anther person,
but we are unsure if it is actually ReNamer's fault: Make renamer not beep when changing rules?

YmerejO42 · 2007-09-16 05:01

One problem with Vista - ReNamer will not save Preferences settings. You can change them however you like, then when you click on Save it pops up with a message that says ::Failed to set data for ":: and does *NOT* save any settings. If you run ReNamer with Admin privileges, it will save settings, but you cannot drag-and-drop files from Explorer unless you have also ran it with Admin privileges (this is an issue with Vista, not ReNamer). Once the settings are saved, if you exit ReNamer and re-run it without Admin privileges, it loses all the settings you have changed. If you run it as Admin, it keeps the settings, but you have the Vista issue with drag-and-drop. Is there any way you could look into this and determine what the problem is with saving settings? I'm not sure how ReNamer saves settings, if you'd be willing to explain how/where it saves them, I might be able to make some (hopefully) intelligent suggestions.

~Jeremy

den4b · 2007-09-17 13:37

It must be that User Account Control thing. It is all very strange. ReNamer stores all of its settings in the same folder as ReNamer.exe. This includes ReNamer.ini, Scripts, Help, Presets, Translits. If you installed ReNamer to "Program Files", it might not have permissions to store those files/folders. Try moving it to your local directory, for example into "Desktop" or "My Documents" folder, to see if it will change anything.

I don't have Vista... If you find out more info, please, post it here.

YmerejO42 · 2007-09-17 14:05

I can almost guarantee that's the problem, Vista requires Admin privs to write anything into the Program Files folder... I'm not sure how you coded ReNamer, but if you can change it to use the user's settings directory (Users\<username> on Vista) then that would most likely fix the problem... Plus, Microsoft usually provides variables accessable by programmers that will allow a program to use certain folders no matter which version of Windows they're programming on, so if you can do it with your build on XP (or whichever version you use) it should work fine on Vista, also. Thanks for replying, and I hope this can be worked out, because ReNamer is easily the most useful utility I've found in a long time.

~Jeremy

den4b · 2007-09-18 11:18

I have it on my "todo" list. I was thinking of having an option of storing settings in:
1) ReNamer folder, e.g.: C:\Program Files\ReNamer\
2) APPDATA folder, e.g.: C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data
3) COMMON_APPDATA folder, e.g.: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data

The last two can be found using SHGetSpecialFolderLocation Function Windows API function.

But there is only 1 problem. Where would I store this flag which tells ReNamer where the settings are stored. Usually, applications use Registry for this purpose, but I don't what to make my program "not portable". Making it only an "Installer" option doesn't sound to good for several reasons. I will have to think about it a bit more.

YmerejO42 · 2007-09-18 12:53

Maybe you could add an extra file (wouldn't have to contain anything more than portable=no) into the installer version, so that people can download either the installer version or a .zip version, the .zip version is for portable useage, the installer version is for installing it on your home system... Vista automatically assigns Admin priviliges to installers, so writing the file into the install folder would happen automatically, and ReNamer could check for the existence of the file to tell if it's supposed to be portable or not. The portable version would then store all settings in the ReNamer folder, but if it detects the file then it would store all settings in the APPDATA or COMMON_APPDATA folder (Since most ReNamer settings would be more global than personal, I could see using COMMON_APPDATA so that if you have more than one login on your computer you wouldn't have to change settings if you happened to be on another screenname). I'm not sure how much overhead that would add to ReNamer, though.

I know that some programs, gaim for example, are compiled in two different versions, where one version is made for installing on a system, and the other is compiled with a flag such as PORTABLE=TRUE and then it automatically stores settings in its home folder. Again, not sure how much this would involve changing the source code... Could be simple if you have the functions for saving/loading settings in one single area, you could just make an if/then that would cause the compiler to save them in APPDATA if compiled with the flag set to FALSE, or save them in the home folder if it's set to TRUE. This would mean offering two different downloads, so that would also affect your bandwidth... gaim used to get around this by having instructions on how to take an installed version and making it into a portable version (copy certain folders on your computer, then download the portable .exe file and put it into the newly copied folders). Theoretically, you could make the source so that it uses a variable to tell where to save settings, then the variable is determined by the compile flag. I haven't programmed anything in years (literally, the last language I programmed in was BASIC on my Commodore 64... Yeah, that long ago.) so I'm not sure, though.

Anyway, I have to say that I really appreciate the work you've done with ReNamer, it saves loads of time with renaming anything (including folders, at the time I picked ReNamer when I was searching for this type of utility it was the only one I could find which would do folders in addition to files), and I especially appreciate the fact that you're willing to accept user input in this manner. I hope we can get this issue worked out without too much hassle on your part.

~Jeremy

den4b · 2007-09-20 23:14

Thanks for your ideas, Jeremy!

I think I'll leave for a while, and will think it over later....

LawOfNonContradiction · 2007-09-30 08:07

AubinWan wrote:

am thinking of going to Vista.

Just say no to vista.

YmerejO42 wrote:

One problem with Vista

just one? I'm sure you can come up with the other reasons its been BANNED by many goverment agencies and many many companies.

here's a little help
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=vista+banned

Last edited by LawOfNonContradiction (2007-09-30 08:08)

den4b · 2007-09-30 21:40

Yeah... BAN VISTA ....

den4b Forum

#1 2007-05-09 21:42

Vista vs ReNamer

#2 2007-05-10 10:25

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

#3 2007-09-16 05:01

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

#4 2007-09-17 13:37

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

#5 2007-09-17 14:05

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

#6 2007-09-18 11:18

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

#7 2007-09-18 12:53

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

#8 2007-09-20 23:14

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

#9 2007-09-30 08:07

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

#10 2007-09-30 21:40

Re: Vista vs ReNamer

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