I have recently had to reinstall Astrodatabank 4 on a new Windows system, because our old Windows 2003 server is going out of service.
(Windows 2003 Server is a server variant of Windows XP).
*** The good news:
using an ADB install CDROM from 2006, I have been abe to get Astrodatabank 4.0 up and running on:
Windows 7 (32-bit edition)
Windows 10 (32-bit edition).
I have so far not been able to get it running on Windows 10 - 64-bit edition.
We will publish detailed install instructions.
The most important point:
The install program proposes the default install location
c:\program files\AstroDatabank4
Do NOT accept this default location. Create a separate directory, for example
c:\mysoft
and tell the install program to install in
c:\mysoft\AstroDatabank4
The reason is that modern Windows system place severe restrictions on everything inside the \program files
directory, which makes running ADB more difficult than it should be.
*** The bad news:
1. The Astrodatabank install CDROM we have at Astrodienst contains two different viruses.
So far, attempts to remove the viruses from the CDROM have failed. I can remove them, but then the install program misses some files and the install fails.
However, this is less of a problem than it seems.
What I have done is install the free antivirus software Avira (from Avira.com). Only the Free Antivirus program is needed, nothing else of what they offer. This program catches the virus after the ADB installation.
2. The Webupdate feature runs out of memory with a fresh install.
Since Astrodienst took over Astrodatabank in 2008, it has continued to provide data for the software's WebUpdate feature. Now the number of new or changed data records is approaching 40'000.
If one installs a new ADB copy from the CDROM, it will try to load all the webupdate data at once - there is not option in the software to select a sub-set of data.
Due to an internal limitation, which I assume is around 32'000 data records, the Webupdate program is not able to digest the downloaded data. It stops with an error message.
I have not found an easy way around this problem. As I am myself controlling the server which provides the update data, I have been able to work around it by putting less data on the update server, then run a first webupdate. Then putting the rest of the data on the update server, run webupdate again.
This is not an option for a user outside of Astrodienst.
What we will offer is putting a current fully updated version of PlacidusDatabank.mdb for download on our server, which can be downloaded manually and made available for users with the PC software.
Detailed instructions will be published.
I need your help:
-----------------
If you have in your possession an Install CDROM of Astrodatabank4 which is older than 2006, I would like you to extract some files from it and email them to me. I hope to get hold of a virus-free version of the install software, that way.
The files I need from the install CDROM are:
ADBDll.exe approx. 230 kb
ADBSet.exe approx. 900 kb
ADBSetL.exe approx. 50 kb
ADBProgs.exe approx. 920 kb
Please get your old Astrodatabank4 install CDROM out of a drawer, mount it on your computer and look at the files it contains.
If you see those, pack them into a zip-archive and email that as an attachment to al...@astro.ch
Thank you for your assistance.
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