[40-tude Dialog] Archival of existing installation

[bill]

Due to the Win10 PC being flaky (I think), every few months Dialog gets
corrupted such that I have reinstall everything (which is a PITA).

Can I run a batch script to copy the important files (like the installed
scripts and the groups in the categories?) so that I can recover easier?

Otherwise each time I have to start from scratch.
What are the important Dialog setup files to archive?
--
I don't care about the news messages themselves. Just the setup.

[VanguardLH]

bill <bi...@spam.invalid> wrote:

> Due to the Win10 PC being flaky (I think), every few months Dialog gets
> corrupted such that I have reinstall everything (which is a PITA).
>
> Can I run a batch script to copy the important files (like the installed
> scripts and the groups in the categories?) so that I can recover easier?
>
> Otherwise each time I have to start from scratch.
> What are the important Dialog setup files to archive?

They're called backups. Lots of free backup software is available.

What's wrong with just copying the Dialog folder to elsewhere, and later
deleting the Dialog folder and copying back from elsewhere? You could
even have the copy command scheduled in Task Scheduler.

[Bernd Rose]

On Wed, 6th Oct 2021 22:02:08 +0200, bill wrote:

> Due to the Win10 PC being flaky (I think), every few months Dialog gets
> corrupted such that I have reinstall everything (which is a PITA).
>
> Can I run a batch script to copy the important files (like the installed
> scripts and the groups in the categories?) so that I can recover easier?

Like VanguardLH already wrote: Copy the whole Dialog directory elsewhere.
Please be careful to delete (or rename) a faulty Dialog version folder on
restore, like VanguardLH wrote! If you copy the backup into an existing
Dialog folder, you'll have a near-certain likelihood of destroying the
whole Dialog database.

I hope, you didn't install Dialog into "C:\Program Files (x86)" or a similar
protected folder? Else, this would be the cause of your Dialog installation
corruption.

Btw.:
You never answered back, whether the script I provided for opening a message
inside an external editor (Notepad++) works for you:

Message-ID: <2cf4nyzc...@b.rose.tmpbox.news.arcor.de>

Your feedback would be appreciated.

Bernd

[VanguardLH]

Bernd Rose <b.rose...@arcor.de> wrote:

> I hope, you didn't install Dialog into "C:\Program Files (x86)" or a
> similar protected folder? Else, this would be the cause of your
> Dialog installation corruption.

Yep, bad idea. Microsoft decided to protect the program folders
(C:\Program Files [x86]), so writing data files there by non-elevated
programs is not just no longer recommended, but results in problems
writing data there. That's why the Roaming, Local, and LocalLow data
folders showed up under your Windows profile folder (%userprofile%).

If you look at the permissions on the C:\Program Files folder, for
example, you won't find your account listed. Instead your account is
included under the Users security group. The Users group does NOT have
full control over this folder, or its children (subfolders). It only
had Read & Execute, List folder contents, and Read permissions, but not
Write permissions. That is how those folders are protected: user
processes cannot write there.

You would have to take ownership of that folder, and propagate ownership
to all it subfolders. Then either change permissions on the Users group
to Full Control, or add your Windows account with it having Full Control
for permissions, and then propagate those permission changes to all
subfolders. It's doable, but changing these permissions is committing
brain surgery on file system security, and could have unwanted side
effects.

For non-elevated programs that are coded to write data under their own
installation folder, like Dialog, I created a separate C:\Programs
folder, so it's separate of the C:\Program Files [x86] system folders,
and under there is where I put the Dialog folder. For me, Dialog is
under C:\Programs\40tude Dialog. I could've called it MyPrograms,
FullControlPermissionPrograms, or anything else I wanted (other than the
name of another existing folder at the same folder level). For those
type of programs wanting to write data into their installation folder,
they should be installed somewhere OTHER than C:\Program Files [x86].
By default, they won't have permissions to write data there.