STOMP

I had expected some of my ancient programs to stop functioning when I made the conversion to XP, and I was not disappointed. A few of them began to work again when I switched to compatibility mode, but others did not. I suppose that's something I'll have to live with; or I'll just preserve those particular applications on my old machine.

I hadn't expected any problems with my backup program, and technically, it was still working after file migration. But STOMP's BackupMyPC was reporting that it intended to back up onto my Panasonic CD-RW drive. The same drive that was no longer part of my new machine. It's not a biggie, but some things just annoy me, and seeing STOMP insist that I had a Panasonic drive was a niggling source of annoyance. No problem, I thought... I'll simply use the Reconfiguration Wizard to select the proper drive.

Where the heck is that reconfiguration wizard??? It doesn't seem to be in the pull-down menu. A search of the internet revealed the name of the module, and I wasn't even able to find the file on my machine. Maybe the migration didn't quite work??? A quick look at my old machine verified that the file wasn't there either!

So, I decided to go to STOMP's support pages (very good support page, by the way) and downloaded the latest upgrade. Like many other products, STOMP's upgrade packages require that you have a previous version installed. No problem. As the upgrade package begins to install, it tells me that the previous version has been found, and it will now be uninstalled prior to upgrading. But the uninstall procedure fails, due to a missing uninstall component. A second attempt to install the upgrade informs me that I have no prior version, and asks me to insert the original disk. When I do, it proceeds, but tells me it will need to remove the old version... after which the uninstall fails.

Now, I'm between a rock and a hard place. The old version (which wasn't actually old - just non-configurable) won't uninstall, and the new version won't install until the uninstall is completed. I meticulously detailed my situation in an email to STOMP, and after three days, they sent a detailed email response. However, the response basically contained the steps I had already followed.

Keenly aware of my recent experience with XP activation, I ran their procedure again anyway (who knows - it might have worked!) but nothing different happened. Then, I got the idea that the only way to fool the computer into thinking the uninstall worked was to remove all traces of the program in the registry. That took the better part of a half hour, but seemed to do the trick. Faced with a "clean" system, the upgrade informed me that I had no previous version of BackupMyPC installed. It again asked me to insert the original CD. However, this time, it did not inform me that the previous version would need to be uninstalled. It just proceeded with the upgrade.

Now, BackupMyPC sees my proper CD-RW drive (was that too much to ask?). And I checked the drop down menu, and the upgrade does have the hardware reconfiguration wizard! I don't know what happened to the previous version's wizard, but at least I'm happy.

Tonight, I have to buy some new CD-R's so I can perform the Disaster Recovery backup.