COMPUTER HELP!!!

[sparcebag]

I installed a Pentax (camera) photo lab,I did a reinstall Upgrade of Win XP SP2.Now I cant open or find the photo lab! Its not in C program files,I used search and nothing can be found!

I put the disc in to install and get a message the program is already installed. I tried Win install cleanup and the Photo lab is not listed there either?? What can I do now??

[Markley]

You might want to try google desktop search. XP search stinks and it might have gotten worse when you did a reinstall. If you don't have and pics on your PC, you might want to try uninstall and reinstall the program. I would try the uninstall on the CD setup if it has it. Let us know what you find.

[Whoaru99]

Confused a little by what you did with XP.

Are you saying you did an full over the top reinstall of XP or a repair reinstall of XP? Or neither?

[Sandmannd]

Yea, did you overlap XP ontop of itself? That's not good. If you did a fresh install then your program shouldn't be there but it probably didn't get formatted right if it's still showing.

[sparcebag]

I did repair upgrade,It was the recommended on the disc,not a reformat if thats what its called

[DTro]

I think he installed SP2. Right?

I would just uninstall the photo lab, and reinstall it.

Use the "remove program" function in the control panel.

[Sandmannd]

Try going to add/remove programs in the control panel. See if you can find the program in there and remove it. Once it's been removed from there you should be able to reinstall it. It sounds like windows just went over itself again. Not always great, but sometimes can get everything going again.

[sparcebag]

Thats my problem its not in program files,its not listed in add-remove programs,I cant find it! When I use its original disc to install it it gives the message this program is already installed.I used search and nothing comes up either.

[DTro]

Try this:

Go to your CD Drive.

Right click the CD and choose "open folder"

Then find the icon that has the extension .exe. There could be a couple.

Double click on one of those and try to install.

[upnorth]

I am thinking it still shows up in the registry. You can try downloading CCleaner and running the registry cleaner. It will go through the registry and clean out the orphaned entries. It may or may not remove the faulty keys.

[Jack Stasney]

If I were you I'd copy my pics off to somewhere safe. Then try the uninstall/reinstall of photo lab. If that doesn't work sounds like your system is fairly hosed.

[DTro]

 Originally Posted By: upnorth

I am thinking it still shows up in the registry. You can try downloading CCleaner and running the registry cleaner. It will go through the registry and clean out the orphaned entries. It may or may not remove the faulty keys.

I was thinking the same thing. The install disk is still seeing something in the registry.

[upnorth]

Welcome to the fun world of Windows There are some things a person can do to clean up the registry, but you can also hose things up pretty good. I have used CCleaner more than just a few time and have yet to see it pull out entries that are still being used. Worth a shot.

If that doesn't work, 2 things you can do. 1. call the support line for the software and see if they have a fix for this issue. 2. back up your data(photos, movies, word, excel etc.) to a CD or something to that nature and then do a clean install of windows. Re-installing Windows on top of Windows rarely works out well, as I am sure you are finding out.

[sparcebag]

Thanks for all the advice! I've tried each piece of advice given To no avail!UPNorth,I'll try contacting The software maker next.

THANKS To all!!

Last night in this slizzy trailor house (I always hated em!)A Water Pipe burst in the floor,So I'm busy trying to figure if I'm going under and in a 2' crawl space or cut the floor out

[lotsofish]

Search for a program called "Process Monitor". Download it from the M$ site.

This program will tell you everything that is happening on your computer. Every time a program accesses a file or the registry, this program will show it.

So here's what you do. First close down all other open programs to minimize "noise". Open the program and on the right side of the little icon menu, uncheck the second to the right icon. You just want to monitor files and registry. Run the installation program all the way through until it says it's already installed.

Now click on the the little magnifying glass icon to stop capture. Click the A with the red under it (highlight) and choose Process Name IS {select the name of the install program, usually setup.exe or something like that} INCLUDE and then <ADD>. Apply the changes.

Go back the list and look at all the highlighted items. Look for file names first. Operation will probably be ReadFile, CreateFile or WriteFile. This will tell you which files it's trying to access. Be careful of anything in C:\Windows\ and subdirectories, unless it's a .INI file (except win.ini or system.ini which I wouldn't delete but look inside of them for any related entries). You might find something that tells you either where it's installed or where it's reading a file that should be deleted to allow the install to run.

If that doesn't work, next look at the registry entries. Are you familiar at all with editing the registry? It would probably be in HKLM\Software\... or HKCU\Software\...

Any installation program that wont reinstall over the top of itself is poorly designed.

[lotsofish]

Oh.. and don't cut the floor out. Just take the skirting off part way so you don't have to scoot all the way from one of the access panels.

[sparcebag]

Thanks again problem solved! I went to pentax site downloaded a upgrade,which asked for my current disc before install could be complete and alls well after 5 hrs of download time with dialup there both back photo lab and Imaging.

[Sandmannd]

Good to hear you are up and running again.

[fishinJohn]

Someone is still using dial up? Glad your problem is fixed.

[jwhjr]

 Originally Posted By: fishinJohn

Someone is still using dial up? Glad your problem is fixed.

I've had to use dial up a few times recently in a pinch. Wow does it crawl... I remember when 56k was fast.