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This morning, I tired to install Video Studio Pro2x on my newly formatted external drive. It saw that I already had VS installed and gave me the choice to uninstall or repair. I chose Repair but the VS program didn't give me a chance to tell it where to install...

I'm thinking it would be nice to have the program and the files together on the portable drive so I can work on any Windows XP machine with a USB plug. (?)

Do I have to completely uninstall the program to do a new install on the external drive or am I way off base here?

Thanks, in advance, for your consideration of my question.

Hi

It is normal to have the program installed on C: drive.
You can only have one instance of X2 installed

The external drive can be used to store your captured video files.

I do not know of anyone installing the program on the external drive.
I can imagine it would cause many problems as other files are installed as well as the main program.
Common Files as well as files on your My Documents folder.

I have in the past installed a program on an external drive but it really is no advantage. Indeed it took longer to load up. The problem comes with the registry and some DLL files. IMHO it really is no advantage in having a program installed on an external drive. If you format the C drive in the future you have to uninstall the program on the external drive and reinstall it. Again this a registry issue. It is fair to say that the least amount of editing you do to the registry the better. There's no better way for a user who is not fully experienced to destroy the operating system than to play with the registry

You can have the program installed on multiple machines. You just can't use more than one at a time. That's what the Smart Package feature is for. It saves a project's files so you can move them to another computer.

Saving project as Smart Package

Packaging a video project is useful if you want to back up your work or transfer your files for sharing or for editing in a laptop or another computer.

To save projects as Smart Package, select File: Smart Package. Specify the Folder path, Project folder name and Project file name. Click OK when done.

svoith wrote:....
I'm thinking it would be nice to have the program and the files together on the portable drive so I can work on any Windows XP machine with a USB plug. (?) .......

Yes you can, and in fact I do this sort of thing with my laptop.
My laptop has a 160GB Hard drive, which for most people is perhaps large enough. I on the other hand have a triple boot system where on start up I can select between
XP Service pack 2 - also specially tweaked for Video Editing.
No Internet, No anti Virus and all non essential services and background stuff turned off. The only software installed is that which is needed to perform Video Editing or Photo Editing. On Start up the Windows Task Manager reports 12 running processes and very little RAM being used.
XP Service pack 3. This is my day to day operating system.
Vista Home Premium This was pre-installed when I bought the laptop. I log into it when needed to perform the odd task that Vista can do better than XP (Not very often!!)

So you can imagine that my hard drive, split into 3 partitions has already used up a lot of valuable space by supporting 3 operating systems.
Next, take a look at my signature block and you will notice I have several versions of the same software - I did this deliberately to help with troubleshooting issues on this Web Board. Again lots of hard drive space used up and I haven't even got to the stuff I actually store on the computer - such as 15,000 photographs, Word Documents, Excel spreadsheets and so on.

Furthermore, being a bit of a computerholic, I even have around 2 dozen other operating systems in the form of Virtual machines, tucked away on my trusty 1TB USB external Hard Drive, things like Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, plus of course Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and so on.

Here is how I install software such as older versions of VideoStudio, Microsoft Office and other such things onto the external hard drive in such a fashion that it is installed "once" but can be used by any of the operating systems capable of using it.

As an example I shall install VideoStudio X2 onto the External Hard Drive from XP, and later use that installation from Vista. The procedure for plugging the external hard drive into a completely different (physical) computer is the same.

Step 1 is to make sure that all your operating systems/computers treat the external hard drive as having the same drive letter. For convenience I adopted the drive letter "M" (For MyBook - the name of that particular USB Drive manufactured by Western Digital)
If you don't know how to assign a drive letter Click here.

Step 2. Create a Folder for your (shared) Programs to be installed into.
Normally programs install at
C:\Program Files
It is therefore sensible to create a folder of that name on your external hard drive, using my drive letter M my (shared) programs all install into
M:\Program Files

Step 3. Install VideoStudio - but when you are invited to change the installation location simply change the C:\Program Files\....\....
to become M:\Program Files\....\....
Therefore VideoStudio X2 will be installed at
"M:\Program Files\Corel\Corel VideoStudio 12"

Step 3.Reboot the computer but this time start up in Vista.
Or if you are using two different computers, plug your external hard drive into the other computer - think about it - it's the same thing.
Make sure that the other operating system / computer treats the external hard drive as having the same drive letter, in my case M

Step 4. Rename the Directory created at Step 3 above from
M:\Program Files\Corel\Corel VideoStudio 12
to become
M:\Program Files\Corel\Corel VideoStudio 12X

Step 5. Install VideoStudio - but when you are invited to change the installation location simply change the C:\Program Files\....\....
to become M:\Program Files\....\....
Therefore VideoStudio X2 will be installed at
"M:\Program Files\Corel\Corel VideoStudio 12"

VideoStudio will now be fully working in Vista (Obviously) but now it is time to see what happens when we start up XP (or plug the external drive into the original computer) - Don't forget we renamed the directory created by the other operating system and so it will now be looking at the new one created in Vista.

Once you are happy that VideoStudio still starts up with the original operating system (or computer) you can then delete the directory
M:\Program Files\Corel\Corel VideoStudio 12x

Thanks for the wonderful details...which I am now reading for the 4th time. It appears I will have to uninstall to get VS to allow me to choose the install location of my external drive. Then I can disconnect the external drive and install on my other computers. (I'm assuming that my video files and projects will remain after the uninstall....)

The external drive letter defaults to E so I will move that up higher so it won't matter which USB device is plugged in first.

I'm not clear on why you changed the name in step 4. Was that just to test the operating system? In my case, wouldn't I go right to the program on the external drive and see if the .exe file works?

Wish me luck!
S.

Steve wrote:Furthermore, being a bit of a computerholic, I even have around 2 dozen other operating systems in the form of Virtual machines, tucked away on my trusty 1TB USB external Hard Drive, things like Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, plus of course Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and so on.

I really think Steve is quite unique. For us mere mortals in the world of computing I think very few of us would aspire to this level I for one have never heard of Ubuntu, Suse or Mandriva but I guess they are all forms of Linux

svoith wrote:.......
I'm not clear on why you changed the name in step 4. Was that just to test the operating system? In my case, wouldn't I go right to the program on the external drive and see if the .exe file works?

Wish me luck!
S.

Some - but not many - programs would work by running the exe program that was installed by the other operating system. One such example is Audacity. HOWEVER most programs would NOT run.
The reason for this is due mainly to 3 reasons, one or more of which may exist in relation to the specific program concerned.

1. Registry Entries.
Many programs upon installation create entries in the Windows Registry.
2. Common Files.
Many programs create further stuff in the folder
C:\Program Files\Common Files\....\....
3. Windows System / System32 Folders etc.
Some programs also create further stuff in the folders below
C:\WINDOWS
Such as DLL files, INI files and other stuff.

Whilst some programs will install themselves in an existing directory - such as an existing directory "M:\Program Files\Corel\Corel VideoStudio 12" - many programs will either complain that the program already exists and tell you to uninstall it, which it cannot do because there are no "uninstall Instructions" - often kept in the Windows Registry, and/or "C:\WINDOWS\Installer" (or some other location created when the program was originally installed.)

Briefly - and hopefully without confusing you further - there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. If you simply follow my method outlined above then it should work. I don't recall using this method with any particular program where it did not.

mitchell65 wrote: I for one have never heard of Ubuntu, Suse or Mandriva but I guess they are all forms of Linux

Yes, those are Linux Systems. Another similar to Linux in appearance though not a Linux System forming part of my collection is "Solaris"