StartWatch under Windows 7 32 Bit

Hi,

has anyone got StartWatch to run under Windows 7 ?

I can’t get StartWatch running automatically and I’ve no idea what to try next.

I can’t get it to stay registered or run on Startup. I’ve tried registering it with and without running as Aministrator.

It says that it has been successfully registered but the next time that the computer is restarted, it has forgotten !
It also loses the system settings (programs etc.)

I’m running Windows 7 Pro with a domain user granted admin rights on the PC and Windows set to autolog the user on

regards
Dave

Have you tried it in compatibility mode?

Yes - makes no difference !

Steve

Please Help ! ! ! ! !

How should I set up Startwatch under Windows 7 ???

regards
Dave :? :?

StartWatch doesn’t store anything in the registry. It just uses files. The files are located in the user’s area of the disk, so there shouldn’t be a need to run as administrator, and it is probably better if you don’t. StartWatch looks for registration info in a file called “registration.txt”. First it looks in the folder where StartWatch is installed. If it doesn’t find one there, it looks in the user’s application data area of the disk. The surest way to do the registration is to take the registration.txt file that I include in the email I send out with your registration info, and drop that file into the folder where you installed StartWatch. If you enter the registration info by typing it in while running StartWatch, then the registration info is written the user’s application data area, and so is only available to that user’s account.

The location of the user’s data is:
Users{username}\AppData\Local\SoftWx\StartWatch

You have to enable the viewing of hidden files and folders in file explorer, because AppData is a hidden folder.

I just did a test on Windows 7, and settings stayed set from one run to another, and I entered registration info, closed StartWatch, and then reopened it, and the registration was still enabled as it should be.

So I’m not sure what is going wrong on your system. It almost sounds like an odd file/folder permissions problem that is preventing StartWatch from writing to its files. Since the files it writes to are in the user’s folders, the user (and StartWatch) should have full permissions to create and write to files there.

Steve

I should also add that in the test I mentioned above, I just installed StartWatch on a clean Windows 7 computer, and ran normally. I didn’t run in compatibility mode, and I didn’t run as administrator.

Steve
SoftWx

Steve,

thanks a lot for the reply and the info that you sent. The explanation of where StartWatch puts things was helpful.

I had been spending a lot of time messing with Windows premissions etc. but your info helped.

I was not getting anywhere fast, so took the drastic step of reinstalling Windows 7 today.
Things appeared to be going fairly well but I’ve hit the wall again !

It appears that I have been caught by a common problem with Windows 7 and Vista - it is related to the system not being able to store the user profile and logging on with a “Temporary” profile which does not store any settings between log-ons. It looks like I’m going to have to do another install and hope for the best. I’ve wasted all of today on this - not to mention the lost time over the past few days. It appears that this is a very common Windows problem with no Microsoft fix. There are a whole load of different “solutions” on the web - none of which seem to work for me.

So, I can confirm it’s not a StartWatch problem - just another piece of st software form Microst !

regards
Dave

Update !

Well, at the 11th hour (actually, it’s been considerably more than 11!) - after much trawling of the internet and trying various “fixes” - I found this . . . .

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940453

“A temporary user profile is created every time that you log on to a Windows Vista-based computer that is connected to a domain”

The salient point is :-
“This behavior occurs because the account that you use to log on to the computer is a member of one or more of the following groups:
Guests
Domain Guests”

Who would have gussed that !

A Domain Guest user worked OK on XP, but not in Vista, Windows 7 etc.

Maybe somebody else may need to know this in the future - I hope is saves you the pain that I’ve just gone through !

Regards
Dave

PS - StartWatch now works as “as advertised” - thanks Steve !

Glad to hear you got things sorted out. I had just read your previous response about the temporary profile, and the thought crossed my mind that it might have something to do with a domain login, but I haven’t heard the bit about guest before. Yeah, Windows is so much fun sometimes. My wife got a drive-by spyware infection while browsing the internet on her netbook, and now it is hopelessly stuffed up. I get to reinstall Windows for her today. I tell everyone in the house, if you get a pop-up saying your computer is infected, just power down right then. Don’t click the cancel button, don’t click the close button. But the pop ups look so believable, and she pressed cancel, and voila, there are now at least 5 different trojans installed that are so wormed into the system that the real anti virus program can’t unravel them all. Argh.

Steve
SoftWx