Reactivation of PTE on New Build PC

[Ian Wigston]

Following my initial post on the third of March I decided to try and resolve the problem myself. As I no longer had a PC running Windows XP Pro I gave my son, who is a Senior IT Technicion, copies of my PTE applications and the relevant keys to try on a machine still running Windows XP. The idea being that if he could open and run the files then clearly the problem would be with Windows 7. He came back to me with the news that he had been unable to open the zipped files and believed them to be corrupt. I then went to the external drive where I had stored downloaded software and other data and began checking other items and copies of downloaded drivers and discovered that they too would not open correctly, indicating that they were corrupt. The six external drives I had been using were all 500GB La Cie Bricks and had been working fine until shortly before I finally decided to rebuild the PC when I began to get error messages telling me that a drive was unformatted or that it could not be read. This did not apply to all drives and four were still accessible and seemed to be operating correctly so when I decided to copy data from 'C'Drive to one of the working drives I had no reason to suspect there would be any problems. In reality the data was not copied correctly as my earlier post indicates. With hind sight I should have checked that the files I had copied worked but like most people I put my trust in the technology and thought no more about it.

Along with two colleagues I photograph museam collections of art and artifacts and we have used La Cie drives to store the images we take but have experienced problems with both the power packs and the circuitry in the drive cases provided by La Cie. Whether the problems I experienced were due to the La Cie drives or the failure of Windows XP to write to them remains open to conjecture but suffice to say the cause of the problem has now been identified.

A member of the AV group I belong to gave me copies of PTE that he was using so that I could try them with windows 7 but for some strange reason the Keys I had which were stored on the same corrupt drive would not work. I received a replacement Key from WnSoft this morning and everything appears to be working correctly so I have updated my Delux version which had expired in July 2009 and look forward to being able to produce AV's once more.

Ian

[Conflow]

Ian,

Whilst reading another Forum Post I came across your Post in which you wrote......

"As I no longer have a PC running Windows XP-Pro which I had given to my son (a Senior IT Technicion) plus

copies of my PTE applications and the relevant Keys to try on a machine running Windows XP.The idea being

that if he could open and run the files ~ then clearly the problem would be with Windows-7" !!

You then go on to assume that the external LaCie-Drives have become corrupted ~ if that were so they would

not have worked on your previous XP-Computer.

Note

If you wish to operate the 'La-Cie Drives' with Windows-7 it is not a simple matter of plugging them in and

hoping for the best ~ they simply won't work. There are a few possible causes,viz:-

1)

If you are running "Win-7" in 64.Bit Mode instead of 32.Bit Mode, the 32.Bit La-Cie Drives won't work.

Neither will any other Programs (Zips+Pte) unless you set up 32.Bit Compatible-Mode on Windows-7 (64.bit).

2)

This also applies to 'New-Hardware' as Windows-7 would see it - that means your La-Cie Drives. Apart from that

a "Win-7" Pc must be placed into a benign Mode before it recognises any Pre-Formatted Drives.

(The same applies to "New-Host" 32.Bit PC's when plugging-in Pre-Formatted Drives. (See 4.below).

3)

When doing this work YOU MUST disconnect your Internet and Switch-off the Win-7 Firewall and your Anti-Virus.

4)

Below are a two Microsoft-Links which are extremely helpful when doing a "Windows-7" Re-build or Re-install

Help with "Win-7" Problems:-

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/help

Help with "Win-7" Compatibility issues:-

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/help/compatibility

There are extensive 'Help-Files' in the above Links and I hope they help you rather than "Bin" your La-Cie Drives.

Brian (Conflow).

[bwat]

Have just upgraded (7 weeks ago) to a new Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows 7 64bit Home Premium and simply plugged my 4 LaCie USB drives in and they all worked perfectly. Drives connected to a 4 port hub with single connection to computer. Previous computer was running Vista 32bit.

Had no problem with installing software either, all run ok even MS Publisher 2000 (yes 2000) taken from my old Office 2000 disc and Quickbooks 2005. PTE also giving no problems (v6.0).

bwat

[Conflow]

Have just upgraded (7 weeks ago) to a new Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows 7 64bit Home Premium and simply plugged my 4 LaCie USB drives in and they all worked perfectly. Drives connected to a 4 port hub with single connection to computer. Previous computer was running Vista 32bit.

Had no problem with installing software either, all run ok even MS Publisher 2000 (yes 2000) taken from my old Office 2000 disc and Quickbooks 2005. PTE also giving no problems (v6.0).

bwat

Hi Bwat,

You are a very lucky person having upgraded from Vista to Win-7 ~ there should be no problems at all as the 32 and 64.Bit Vista's are readily compatible with Windows-7 as are Microsoft Office (Component) Discs which you mentioned.

However you are missing the point about Ian's Post-Topic above:-He is upgrading from XP-Pro to Win-7 ~ not from Vista, and in that respect there will be quite a few problems needing attention and it's the reason for my reply to him.

Concerning the "La-Cie Drives" these come in 2 versions:- "La-Cie USB Types" and the faster "La-Cie Firewire Types".

This response to you and Ian is to clarify the situation rather than give false hope which could be assumed from your Post.

Regards,

Brian (Conflow)

[cjdnzl]

You may have already done this but I have come across persons who do not know about Large Block Addressing, LBA for short. Basically, NTFS, the file system employed by Win 2000 and later uses 28-bit address coding, which can address an absolute maximum of 137 gigabytes. If you have a bigger drive than that, any address beyond 137 GB gets wrapped to the beginning, overwriting data previously recorded.

Windows has the option of using LBA addressing which can address literally terabytes, but paradoxically is by default switched off when installing the operating system.

There are utilities available on the net (google LBA) that will switch LBA on, enabling correct addressing of these 500/1000 GB drives. If your LBA is switched off you are in trouble as soon as your data exceeds 137 GB.

[Conflow]

CJ,

I completely agree with you concerning the 'wrap-around' on large drive >500.Gb although XP-Pro is a little more forgiving

than 2000. But Ian has another problem concerning the existing Hardware he wishes to connect to his New "Win-7 PC".

Invariably over 90% of his existing Hardware will require New-Drivers in order to run on "Win-7" 64.Bit operation and even

so, some Hardware need's driver-upgrades to run properly on "Win-7" 32.Bit operation. That's the very reason I attached

'Links' to the Microsoft Support Sites for his consideration's.

I'm sure you wish for him as I do ~ that he gets it all correct and running properly.

Brian (Conflow).