A hint to those moving FARR with settings from XP to Vista/Win7

[mouser]

Joto asked me today in the chat channel about moving his installed FARR directory from an XP machine to a Windows 7 machine, so that he wouldn't lose any settings.
Joto just copied the Program Files\Find and Run Robot\ directory from his XP machine to his Windows 7 machine.
And all worked fine *except* that his custom aliases were gone.

The reason is that on Windows 7, by default FARR is required to store user data (including the MyAliases subdirectory) in the My Documents folder (wheras on Windows XP it's in the program files directory.

So, IF you want to move your FARR with all your settings from XP to Vista/Win7, just make sure to move your MyCustom subfolder to MyDocuments\DonationCoder\Find and Run Robot\AliasGroups.

ps. I believe your settings file will automatically be copied over to MyDocuments folder on first use so you don't have to manually move that.

[kfitting]

This is something I've seen with CHS as well... does this mean that Win7 does not allow completely portable applications (I doubt this based on what I've seen) or is it just that FARR and CHS use the Windows document folders?  (Not pointing fingers or making suggestions, this is purely informational!)

I have yet to figure out the Win7 scheme!  (Granted I havent spent time researching it either!

[mouser]

does this mean that Win7 does not allow completely portable applications

no.  in fact you can use all of my apps portably by editing the configdir.ini file and uncommenting the portable=true line.
then you can run farr or chs with all files in one directory.

HOWEVER -- this directory must be one you have full permission to write in -- and thus cannot be your normal Program Files directory.

[kfitting]

Oh, I see.  So IF the program is in the Program Files directory, you have to use the Win7 document folders.  That makes some sense.  I typically install portable apps into a portable program folder on another partition so that's why I havent run into this before.

Just for my own clarification.  If I just unzip FARR and CHS into a folder they do not have the portable switch turned on?  (Sorry, at work and cant test.)

[mouser]

If I just unzip FARR and CHS into a folder they do not have the portable switch turned on?

correct -- you have to manually edit the configdir.ini file to make them work 100% portable.