ApplicationInstallerTrouble
Why does ATCS Monitor sometimes reinstall?
The ATCS Monitor MSI-based installer installs all the files shown below. If you don’t have your Tools->Folder Options->View set to show the maximum types of files, etc, you may not see all of these in Windows Explorer when you look. What is important to users is that MSI installations are “self-healing”, that is, if anything that was originally installed gets removed, whether inadvertently or purposely, the MSI will replace the missing files from the original ATCS_Monitor.msi package. When this occurs, it will appear that ATCS Monitor is reinstalling itself…now you know what is really happening. This should be a fairly quick process. There’s no point in interrupting it, since it would just occur again on next launch if you do interrupt it. Newer files with the same name will not be replaced with older ones, since nothing gets replaced.
Example: If you decide you no longer want valley.lay in your Layouts folder and delete it, ATCS Monitor will put it back on the next launch.
It’s also important to retain your ATCS_Monitor.msi in the place it was when you installed it. Even though you’re done installing, if the self-healing process needs to start, it will look for this file where it installed from. If it’s not there, you get into this ugly loop, where a Cancel or OK are ineffective options and require terminating the process from Task Manager.
Note that the self-heal function does not apply to instances of the application installed to locations other than the original installation directory. So if you install to directory X, but then copy all the files essential to basic operation (the .exe, .dll's, .ocx’s, and .mdb) to alternate directory Y and work from there, deleting essential files in Y results in program errors rather than self-heal, and deleting non-essential files (.ini’s, .lay, etc) is not a problem. This is not recommended for novices.
See the screenshots below for the files you’ll need to retain to avoid self-healing activity:
- Note that graphlite.ocx is no longer installed with version 3.5.2.
- Note that Jetcomp.exe and APIgid32.dll will no longer be installed with version 3.5.4, but BCH6345.dll and MSScript.ocx are added to the main directory and must remain.
-- GaryHahn - 29 Oct 2006