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Author Topic: My Aliases are gone after update  (Read 4490 times)

zzynx

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My Aliases are gone after update
« on: March 24, 2015, 03:45 AM »
Hi,
Today I updated FARR to the latetst version.
After that I experience that my aliases are gone. Frustrating since I rely for 100% on aliases.

In the subdirectory AliasGroups I find two subdirectories: "Installed" and "MyCustom".
In the subdirectory "MyCustom" I detect a file "myaliases.alias" (and some backup files) containing my aliases.
Q: How do I tell the updated FARR to use/know those aliases?

mouser

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Re: My Aliases are gone after update
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2015, 05:14 AM »
Ok, lets try to help -- first things first, go backup (zip) your MyCustom directory now before you do anything else, before you exit FARR.  Put that backup someplace safe.
Now let's try to figure out what's gone wrong.

Your custom aliases should be in the myaliases.alia file in the AliasGroups/MyCustom directory.

You can load that file into a text editor to check it out -- see if it has the aliases you created in it? If so, then you know your aliases are there, just not behaving as you expect..
Go to the Aliases list in your FARR options, select myaliases and see if they are there?

Let me know what you find.

Is it possible you switched from a portable install to a non-portable install of FARR, or vice versa -- something that would have caused FARR to be loading your aliases from one directory and now loading from another.
This could cause the issue -- because the portable version will try to load your myalias from the alias subdirectory where the exe lives while the normal install will try to load the alias file from the user data directory.

---------

Another likely cause would be if you ran FARR as a different logged in user.  Try exiting FARR and restarting -- it may be that the installation ran as administrator and you normally run as a normal user, etc.

Let me know.

zzynx

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Re: My Aliases are gone after update
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2015, 05:28 AM »
Hi mouser,

First things first:
Ok, lets try to help
Appreciated very much! :Thmbsup:

Is it possible you switched from a portable install to a non-portable install of FARR
You're spot on.
During my first post and this one I didn't sit and wait, of course. (Since it's really annoying not to have my launcher at hand - I miss it every minute)
So I added a new alias in my group and nothing changed to my file "myaliases.alias".
However - after some time - I went searching (with Everything) for another instance of "myaliases.alias" and... indeed found it: c:\users\...\documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\MyCustom!
Which made me realize that indeed I grabbed the normal setup file (I'm still wondering why I did that - I'm a fan of portable apps), while previously I went for the portable version.

So, this is what I did to solve the problem:
* I grabbed the portable zip file
* unzipped it in my FARR directory and
* it seems as if I'm up and running again.  :)

Sorry for my stupidness.
Thanks a lot for your willing to help. (time to spend some credits)

mouser

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Re: My Aliases are gone after update
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2015, 05:55 AM »
glad to hear we've found the nature of the problem!
no need to apologize, it wasn't stupidity, its something people have encountered before.



however there is something important you need to check and make sure you got right.

you found the "c:\users\...\documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\MyCustom" folder -- and THAT is where your custom aliases should be when you are using the install version.

So, this is what I did to solve the problem:
* I grabbed the portable zip file
* unzipped it in my FARR directory and


this may be problematic and you probably don't want to do this.

by doing that you are telling FARR to try to save all of its files inside that directory -- which windows will not like!
if you are using Windows XP then it's ok and you don't have to worry -- but if you are using a new version of windows, it may behave ok but you might have problems with your custom files being saved later by microsoft windows in weird places (virtual shadow directories -- you don't want to know!).



So.. Here is the better solution:

Exit FARR.
Delete the ConfigDir.ini file in the C:\Program Filesx86\FindAndRunRobot\ directory
Now that you have done this, FARR will behave normally and will try to load your custom alias files from "c:\users\...\documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\MyCustom" and try to load your settings from your c:\users\...\documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot\" directory, which is what you want on windows vista,7,8, etc.
Then you may need to copy your old good MyCustom directory from your previous portable install into "c:\users\...\documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups"
Does that make sense?

To summarize, your goal is to have your custom settings in your "c:\users\...\documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot" directory.

To be really sure, you might want to start over by deleting your C:\Program Filesx86\FindAndRunRobot and then reinstall FARR from setup program, and then copy your custom files from the old portable install to "c:\users\...\documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot\"  that would help you be sure that it's loading the files from the right place.

zzynx

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Re: My Aliases are gone after update
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2015, 06:31 AM »
it wasn't stupidity, its something people have encountered before.
Well, I'm not convinced that the validity of the second part, proves the validity of the first part.  ;)
Anyway.

You might have misunderstood my goal: I want to have FARR running in portable mode. (I'm running Windows 7)

So, that's why - as to rectify my mistake - I downloaded the portable version and unzipped it to my c:\tools\launch\FARR directory
That's the directory
1) where I did unzip the portable version to previously ànd
2) which I choose to install the (by mistake) non-portable FARR in today.

So, I think thought, now I'm running FARR in portable mode and it gets my aliases from the file c:\tools\launch\FARR\AliasGroups\MyCustom\myaliases.alias
Unfortunately, I have added an aliases and indeed the file c:\tools\launch\FARR\AliasGroups\MyCustom\myaliases.alias hasn't changed.  :'(
But the file c:\Users\...\Documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\MyCustom\myaliases.alias has!

To summarize, your goal is to have your custom settings in your "c:\users\...\documents\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot" directory.
No. I want them in my portable directory c:\tools\launch\FARR\AliasGroups\MyCustom\myaliases.alias

But given the info you provided, I exited FARR and went to the c:\tools\launch\FARR directory and found:
* A file "ConfigDir_Sample.ini" in which everything was commented out
* A file "ConfigDir.ini" in which everything was commented out
* A file "ConfigDir_Default.ini" in which the lines
       PORTABLE=TRUE
       CONFIGDIR = .
   were active

I opened the file "ConfigDir.ini" and made the lines
       PORTABLE=TRUE
       CONFIGDIR = .
active and this solved my problem. When now I add a new alias it is added in c:\tools\launch\FARR\AliasGroups\MyCustom\myaliases.alias.

I think I'm good now. Right?

mouser

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Re: My Aliases are gone after update
« Reply #5 on: March 24, 2015, 06:34 AM »
ah there you go, i understand completely now -- and you've proven you are no dummy  :Thmbsup:
you solved it completely and correctly -- you are all set  :up:

zzynx

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Re: My Aliases are gone after update
« Reply #6 on: March 24, 2015, 07:37 AM »
you've proven you are no dummy  :Thmbsup:
Pheeew. What a relief!  :D

you solved it completely and correctly -- you are all set  :up:
Thanks for the confirmation (and for your time)