My remarks about the installation problems being Bill Gate’s fault are because he’s supposed to be the chief software architect of Windows (not the same as a programmer), so he should be aware of the problems with different versions of software installations interfering with each other, and especially different versions of BASIC, since that’s his personal favorite language. It wasn’t my intention to get this thread off-track.

#63, watcher13, the Bill Gates email which you linked was shocking. Although a few years old, it shows him to be completely out-of-touch with the architecture of Windows, the Microsoft website, and Windows update procedures. If I was chairman of Microsoft, I’d be using Windows all the time, examining its features and usability, update procedures, and internal workings. This just shows that you don’t have to have decent products, staff, or procedures when you’ve got a huge illegal monopoly.

#57, mike, although I certainly don’t always agree with you, and in particular there are numerous serious problems with this comment of yours, you have my respect because you give rational opinions without name-calling. The question wasn’t whether BASIC is a good or bad language. The early BASIC interpreters which Bill Gates wrote (that’s not the same as creating the BASIC language, which I never said) are the only code which I know for sure he wrote himself. He probably worked on the CP/M clone which he purchased for $50,000 and which became MS-DOS/PC-DOS. He retired from coding early (good thing). BASIC was largely obsolete at the time Bill Gates was writing his interpreters. Pascal, although generally compiled, not interpreted, existed and was a vastly superior language (of course, it’s also been obsolete for some time). Pascal was designed to be a very easy-to-use teaching language, and while one can argue that all useful implementations diverged from the too-restrictive original spec, one can say the same thing of most language implementations. Long ago, I looked at using Microsoft’s BASIC interpreter which they wrote for the Apple II (sold under the Apple name), probably largely written by Bill Gates, and it was unusable, it couldn’t do anything. Some of us would argue that the BASIC language itself was obsolete at the time it was created, we used a vastly (and I do mean vastly) more powerful interpreted language which significantly predated BASIC when I was in college. Your other remarks would take too long to go into briefly.

#84, rodken, sorry I missed your comment, I didn’t look at the comments again until just now, this thread was getting too far off-topic and taking up too much of my time. Reohix installations make a mess out of VB-related registry entries, although they don’t appear to overwrite VB DLL’s and OCX’s, nor register their own (which presumably would only be used if you didn’t already have the VB controls installed). However, even that could be a problem if their controls are newer than yours. That’s why installations need to be done properly. I said this sort of thing was Bill Gate’s fault, because improper application installations should only mess up those applications, not ones which you already have installed. That goes to the architecture of Windows, and has never been fixed (it’s not like Microsoft hasn’t had time, and it should have been done properly in the first place).

After some experimenting, I found that the “Setup.msi” file cannot be run when it is anywhere under a regular folder that has anywhere with the name of that folder a “Grave Accent” (also called a “Backtick”, “Single Quote” or “Left Apostrophe”). A Grave Accent is the character that appears under the Tilda on the key in the upper-left corner of the keyboard. So if you have a folder that has a Grave Accent anywhere within the name of that folder, and the “Setup.msi” file is anywhere under that said folder…that is, however many folders deep that the “Setup.msi” file is placed, then the “Setup.msi” file cannot run and a small window will pop up stating:

“This installation package could not be opened. Verify
that the package exists and that you can acccess it, or
contact the application vendor to verify that this is a
valid Windows Installer package.”

However, an unextracted “Setup.msi” file (that’s in the zipped folder) will run when the zipped folder that it is in is at any level under a folder with a Grave Accent in the folder’s name, unless the zipped folder is directly under that said folder. The unextracted “Setup.msi” file also will not run when a Grave Accent is in the name of the zipped folder that contains it. Moreover, the “Setup.msi” file, whether unextracted or extraccted, will not run when the Grave Accent is within the “Setup.msi” file’s name.

I had the unfortunate experience of going through all of this because I download GOTD zip folders within a folder that is under a folder that I had put a Grave Accent as the first character in its name. I did this because I wanted to make that folder one of the first folders in the list without having a large “1″ or bracket or parenthesis…which also would cause the folder to be more first in order, but I wanted the small tick because it was discreet.

Who would have ever known that the Grave Symbol in a folder name would cause a setup app to error when run? The “Setup.msi” file is the only file that has ever erred because of that Grave Accent in an upper folder name. As of now, I had removed the Grave Accent and precceded the folder name with a “(1.”…which puts it first in line.

I am running XP 2 on an somewhat older Gateway machine.