transferring a v3 catalog to another machine

[advwebsys]

we have a customer who is still (successfully) running a v3 catalog.

the machine that it resides on is dying and has major problems.

he's asked me to help him transfer it to another machine.

we copied the entire actinic directory (in program files) onto a cd.

we installed from his actinic cd onto the new machine.

the 'prototype' catalog came up just fine.

then i went in and copied the contents of the cd directory by directory over the existing actinic install.

starting up actinic still showed the initial catalog.

went back and deleted the entire actinic directory in program files and copied the cd again, creating a new actinic directory.

same result - bringing up actinic displays the 'prototype' AND displays the day date of the cd, rather than the daydate of the upgrade(s) he's done.

we need to get him onto this new machine so he can continue operations and allow us to finally upgrade him.

any suggestions?

[leehack]

Does V3 have a site1 folder like the subsequent versions since the second world war?

If so rather than copy the whole actinic folder, paste in the site1 folder and see what happens. This seems to be what people are doing on V4 upgrades.

Can you provide a link so i can see a V3 site up and running, id love to see how much has changed? Did V3 ship with a club to ward off any wild animals trying to enter ones cave?

[advwebsys]

Does V3 have a site1 folder like the subsequent versions since the second world war?

yes.

If so rather than copy the whole actinic folder, paste in the site1 folder and see what happens. This seems to be what people are doing on V4 upgrades.

worth a try.

Can you provide a link so i can see a V3 site up and running, id love to see how much has changed? Did V3 ship with a club to ward off any wild animals trying to enter ones cave?

www.weberspump.com

the customer's strategy is twofold:

1. don't spend anything

2. if it ain't broke, don't fix it

since they do quite well with this site, i have to agree with number 2, but now something IS broken and the fix is going to be somewhat painful.

[leehack]

Try the site1 folder trick, it stands a very good chance of working.

Thanks for providing the link, its like a glimpse back in time - pretty cool actually.

Oh and by the way - good luck!

If you are going to upgrade to V8, you will need to upgrade to V7 first more than likely.

[Bruce]

David,

Have you had any luck with the above suggestion? If that has not worked, then mail me the zipped up 'Site1' folder, if lesser than 10MB else, upload to your server and drop me a link so that I can download and check on my end.

Kind regards,

[advwebsys]

bruce - have not tried that yet. i will need to go back to the customer in order to do so. just to make sure, the procedure would be:

1. install from cd on new machine.

2. delete installed site1

3. copy site1 from existing machine

but.... what about the fact that the code on the original cd was upgraded at some point to a newer v3 release?

fyi - the site directory (unzipped) is about 170Mbytes. zipped should be a LOT smaller.

[Bruce]

What I would suggest is to update the new install to whatever version the old one is on. Once that is done instead of deleting the 'Site1' on the new install, copy the contents of the backed up 'Site1' folder and paste into the one on the new install.

Kind regards,

[advwebsys]

copy the contents of the backed up 'Site1' folder and paste into the one on the new install.

i guess i don't understand why this is better than just a direct replacement, as it would keep the 'prototype' hrml and .cat files, but would overwrite everything else (like catalog.mdb)

[advwebsys]

well, THIS is interesting. up until this afternoon, i was giving the customer instructions on what to do. when i arrived today, i discovered that the machine he was trying to transfer to (one he had just bought) is running VISTA!!!!

here's what happened.....

i was able to upgrade the v3 install he did using the upgrade cd he had.

then following your advice, i tried to copy Site1 from the cd backup he created to the actinic catalog directory we just upgraded.

after 10 minutes of 'calculating', VISTA came back and said it would take 9 days and 11 hours to copy the 5000+ files from the cd to the local drive.

at which point i gave up.

i then went to the machine that catalog is now running on and downloaded ad-aware, spybot and the grisoft free virus checker and spyware analyzer.

after running all 3 spyware tools, the machine is now about 30% faster.

the outcome:

1. he should be able to download his orders, obviating the need for me to get v3 copied over to the VISTA machine.

2. he has agreed to upgrade.

as mr. holmes so aptly said..... "the game's afoot!"

[Bruce]

I dont think you will ever get v3 to work on Vista, we are still working on releasing a Vista compatible version for v7.

Kind regards,

[advwebsys]

i have NO INTENTION of doing so. the problem i encountered actually had nothing to do with actinic - all i was trying to do was to copy the contents of a directory from cd to hard drive. actinic wasn't even running.

[advwebsys]

can't believe it's going so well......

using my laptop (xp pro sp2) iwas able to:

1. create a new v3 site, then upgrade it

2. copy the customer's site1 directory into it, making sure it was ok

3. copy the same site1 directory into v4.11 - upgraded perfectly

4. export from v4

5. import into v7

the only 'problem' was that the v4 snapshot put all the product images into a NON_CATALOG directory, which v7 couldn't find. it was easy enough to copy all the images into the site directory and voila!

now we need to tweak the v7 version a bit and then hopefully import into v8.

[Bruce]

Thats great, glad you go it so far without too much fuss.

Kind regards,