Running QM from a USB hard drive

[Clive Lansink]

Hello.

The QM manual says QM can be installed on a USB memory stick and moved from one PC to another. I'm not sure if that would be ideal because I understand memory sticks can be quite slow at writing, and they're not really designed for a lot of repeated writing. But what we'd like to do is run QM on a USB hard drive. USB drives nowadays are fast and we have all our main applications running on an external drive so we can easily move to another computer if we're servicing the first one or if it breaks down. So we'd like to put QM onto this drive as well and that seems possible.

Does anyone know if a USB drive is the same idea as a memory stick for this feature?

We've run the installer and followed the prompts to install it on the connected USB drive. As expected, it has created the file called memstick in the root folder, which is explained in the manual. We now have a system id that I presume is unique to this hard drive.

I have obtained the acgtivation code for the system id. But I get an activation error 25 when I try to enter it and it won't activate.

Zumasys has explained what this means. They say the underlying problem is that Windows is not adding the USB device to the list of connected devices in the registry. I don't know if that's really the case but obviously qM somehow doesn't fully recognise this drive. And the separate USB tool they provide doesn't either. It just reports no USB storage devices found. Obviously this is wrong because it is actually running from a USB-connected Seagate 3TB Expansion Portable Hard Drive.

I downloaded and ran a simple utility from Nirsoft that gives information about all the connected USB devices. It certainly sees the drive, and while it doesn't provide the vendor name, it does provide a vendor id and serial number, as well as a lot of other information about the device, including that it is a mass storage device. But it seems something prevents QM from getting the information it needs.

First, I'd like to know if what we want to do is in fact possible. If it is, does anyone know what might be the problem here. Finally, if there's something about this drive or manufacturer that is getting in the way here, can someone recommend a hard drive manufacturer and model that does work with QM. Drives are not expensive and the pragmatic solution might just be to buy a drive that does work with QM. But if this feature only works on a memory stick, then I'm not sure if we would take this any further.

By the way, I don't know if this is relevant, but when we set up a drive in this way to run our applications, to ensure consistency, we run the Windows diskmgmt command and assign a specific drive letter to the USB connected drive. One advantage of this approach is services can run from it reliably, because it always has the same drive letter. But could that be defeating the way QM perceives this drive?

Thanks everyone.


Clive Lansink
Email: Cl...@Lansink.Co.NZ
Phone: +64 9 520-4242
Mobile: +64 21 663-999

[Martin Phillips]

Hi Clive,

 

We have seen this problem three times over the last couple of years but have been unable to reproduce it here.

 

You should be able to install QM on a USB hard drive or SSD. We will investigate.

 

 

Martin

 

 

From: ope...@googlegroups.com <ope...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Clive Lansink
Sent: 20 January 2022 09:11
To: ope...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Running QM from a USB hard drive

 

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[Steve Trimble]

I have run many sales representatives with a single user license of QM and several other clients with multiple use license of QM on a USB stick.

Here is a sweet thing for you to consider.

Put the QM license on the USB stick, but ALL data files and applications on a SSD drive. I used this setup on several customers that wanted a Windows computer instead of a Linux machine. The ONLY thing you have to then manage is the drive letter associated with the SSD drive. The speed of SSD over a normal hard drive is incredible.

Computerized Data Mgmt Inc
Steve Trimble
(501) 772-3450 cell / text

cdm...@gmail.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openqm/SA0PR07MB7676E77E48FF63F23948B9D3C85A9%40SA0PR07MB7676.namprd07.prod.outlook.com.

[Clive Lansink]

Hi everyone.

Thanks Martin and Steve for responding. Good to know it should work on a hard drive.

Martin please let me know if I can help in any way. For example, since I have the problem in question, if you need me to read various registry keys of interest then just ask. While it is not urgent, I am keen to resolve this problem. Also, in case it helps, I'm attaching the output file generated by the Nirsoft utility which does seem to be able to find out all sorts of information about this drive. I don't know where it is looking to get that information which somehow QM is not able to find. It may be the drive does not behave in the way QM expects, but I also suspect what's really going on here depends a lot on Microsoft's documentation on how USB devices are supposed to behave, and whether manufacturers genuinely follow those rules. I suspect also that some rules may be set by the USB consortium, whatever their name is, but it would not surprise me if Microsoft or the disk drive manufacturer has chosen not to fully implement those rules.

And also please tell me if you know of a drive or manufacturer that does work as QM expects. It might make sense for me to just buy that drive, get this working and move on.

Steve that's an interesting idea and I'll give that some thought. So in an arrangement like you are suggesting, I presume qmsys would be on the memory stick, because that is what is actually installed, but other accounts could be on another SSD drive. Is that right?

Cheers.

Clive Lansink
Email: Cl...@Lansink.Co.NZ
Phone: +64 9 520-4242
Mobile: +64 21 663-999

Email: Cl...@Lansink.Co.NZ<mailto:Cl...@Lansink.Co.NZ>

Phone: +64 9 520-4242
Mobile: +64 21 663-999

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[Steve Trimble]

Clive:

I set my qm stick to letter U (because it is rarely used on my folks computers).

I forget how I did that but it is a Microsoft thing.

Here is a sample of ACCOUNTS on QMSYS

SORT ACCOUNTS
Account.........   Pathname...................
ACCTG              D:\USR\QM\ACCTG
ACCUTERM           @DRIVE:\ACCUTERM
AUCTION            @DRIVE:\AUCTION
AUTHORIZE.NET      d:\usr\qm\AUTHORIZE.NET
AVALARA            D:\USR\QM\AVALARA

QMSYS              @QMSYS

Notice the accounts that the path is @DRIVE - That is the USB stick. Also see that QMSYS is even more special - @QMSYS. So, I have several serious applications with 1M plus data records on the USB stick, but I also have other accounts, etc on the hard drive. My experience is that Microsoft doesn't really care about a USB stick. An example of this is when QM is running and someone just 'reboots' Windows, it doesn't see it as a legitimate app.

The really cool thing is, you can 'safely remove' the stick and no one can run QM until you plug it back in.

Here is the .bat file that I run when I want to connect to QM/Windows:

set QMSYS=%CD%qmsys

qmsys\bin\qmusbsrvr.exe -m

On the Windows taskbar it shows like the cmd.exe dialog box (because it is running a .exe program).

Here is what it's screen displays:

U:\>set QMSYS=U:\qmsys
U:\>REM qmsys\bin\qmusbsrvr.exe -m "atwin70\atwin70.exe CDMI.atsc"
U:\>qmsys\bin\qmusbsrvr.exe -m
[ QMUSBSRVR 4.0-4   Copyright, Zumasys Inc., 2021.  All rights reserved. ]
Establishing the telnet listener on port 4240...
Establishing the QMClient listener on port 4243...
Accepted telnet connection from 127.0.0.1

Really cool stuff. I installed over 200 of these sticks to customer reps around the US. And because of QMNet, when the rep had 'internet' service, the software would 'phone home', push any needed activity, pull any revised data back to the USB stick and they were ready for the next day. My client used this software over 5 years before they went totally web based (of course this required the rep to always have internet service).

I wrote some Charity Event software and we ran (totally on the USB stick) 9 AccuTerm sessions for 6 hours updating Auction bids, Members and Sponsors information, creating and displaying on big screens current bid prices on items, etc. Used it several times.

good luck sir!

Computerized Data Mgmt Inc
Steve Trimble
(501) 772-3450 cell / text

cdm...@gmail.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openqm/0100017e7903501c-9f7380bf-7a84-4d55-88d7-deae233eaad4-000000%40email.amazonses.com.

[Clive Lansink]

Thanks Steve. We definitely want to go portable so you've given me a new possible way to do it.

Cheers.


Clive Lansink
Email: Cl...@Lansink.Co.NZ
Phone: +64 9 520-4242
Mobile: +64 21 663-999

-----Original message-----
From: Steve Trimble <cdm...@gmail.com>
To: OpenQM Group <ope...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Running QM from a USB hard drive
Reply-to: ope...@googlegroups.com
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2022 14:14:50 -0600

Clive:
I set my qm stick to letter U (because it is rarely used on my folks
computers).
I forget how I did that but it is a Microsoft thing.

Here is a *sample* of ACCOUNTS on QMSYS

SORT ACCOUNTS
Account......... Pathname...................
ACCTG D:\USR\QM\ACCTG
ACCUTERM @DRIVE:\ACCUTERM
AUCTION @DRIVE:\AUCTION
AUTHORIZE.NET d:\usr\qm\AUTHORIZE.NET
AVALARA D:\USR\QM\AVALARA
QMSYS @QMSYS

Notice the accounts that the path is *@DRIVE* - That is the USB stick. Also
see that QMSYS is even more special - *@QMSYS*. So, I have several serious

applications with 1M plus data records on the USB stick, but I also have
other accounts, etc on the hard drive. My experience is that Microsoft
doesn't really care about a USB stick. An example of this is when QM is
running and someone just 'reboots' Windows, it doesn't see it as a
legitimate app.
The really cool thing is, you can 'safely remove' the stick and no one can
run QM until you plug it back in.

Here is the *.bat file* that I run when I want to connect to QM/Windows:

set QMSYS=%CD%qmsys
qmsys\bin\qmusbsrvr.exe -m

On the Windows taskbar it shows like the cmd.exe dialog box (because it is
running a .exe program).

*Here is what it's screen displays*:

U:\>set QMSYS=U:\qmsys
U:\>REM qmsys\bin\qmusbsrvr.exe -m "atwin70\atwin70.exe CDMI.atsc"
U:\>qmsys\bin\qmusbsrvr.exe -m
[ QMUSBSRVR 4.0-4 Copyright, Zumasys Inc., 2021. All rights reserved. ]
Establishing the telnet listener on port 4240...
Establishing the QMClient listener on port 4243...
Accepted telnet connection from 127.0.0.1

Really cool stuff. I installed over 200 of these sticks to customer reps

around the US. And because of *QMNet*, when the rep had 'internet' service,

the software would 'phone home', push any needed activity, pull any revised
data back to the USB stick and they were ready for the next day. My client

used this software over 5 years before they went totally web based (*of
course this required the rep to always have internet service*).

I wrote some Charity Event software and we ran (totally on the USB stick) 9
AccuTerm sessions for 6 hours updating Auction bids, Members and Sponsors
information, creating and displaying on big screens current bid prices on
items, etc. Used it several times.

good luck sir!

*Computerized Data Mgmt Inc*
*Steve Trimble*
*(501) 772-3450 cell / text*
*cdm...@gmail.com <cdm...@gmail.com>*

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openqm/0100017e7903501c-9f7380bf-7a84-4d55-88d7-deae233eaad4-000000%40email.amazonses.com
> .

>

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