carlson survey 2007 install inside virtual machine

[i8degrees]

Hi, there! I was referred to this web site a few days ago by another co-worker and thought I'd give it a try with a question of mine. Thank you in advance for any helpful information!

I've been experimenting with virtual machine technology (eg. VMWare, MS Virtual PC 2007, and in Unix, qemu and VirtualBox) and I have found that Carlson Survey 2007 (Survey module only) does not get past the dialog box prompting for where to install the application at inside a virtualized licensed copy of Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 SP2 Enterprise. No errors pop up, nor do I see anything in the Windows Event Log other than a mention that the Carlson installer has unexpectedly terminated. I noticed inside the Carlson Survey install log under the local TEMP directory that the only indicative text related to the issue is a thread unexpectedly terminating for unknown reasons.

Yes, I was the local administrator on both boxes, I've tried via RDP as well as locally logged on in virtual machine. The installer issue that I am having is inside a VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org) virtual machine with Linux as the host. The box in particular is a P4 2ghz, 1024GB of RAM, 80GB ATA100 HDD, with 20GB HDD and 384MB RAM dedicated to the virtual Windows installation.

The issue puzzles me because AutoCAD 2005, Carlson Survey 2004 (Survey), Microsoft Office and other major applications have installed without one bit of an issue.

Does anybody out there have any clues? I can barely stand to use CS2004 after using the new features of CS2007

[Jason]

Do you get as far as the prompt for the serial number or does it terminate before then?

[i8degrees]

Yes, the prompt for the serial number is the first dialog I see and after typing in the serial number, it proceeds on to the installation program. Right after asking what features I want installed and where to install is when the setup stops.

I can see that the setup executable process stays running, using ~10-20MB of memory but 0% CPU usage. Is there any specific information I can supply to aid you?

[Jason]

Sending you an email. let me know if it helps.

[i8degrees]

I'm not able to overwrite C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\MSVCP60.DLL as it is in use -- I'm hesitant to boot into safe mode and overwrite it being that it is a core library of Windows executables.

Unless you really want me to try this method, I would like to try something else. Thank you, though, for the quick response times!

[Jason]

i8,

Yeah I would not replace it if it's already there. Try sending me the SurvInstall.log from %temp% folder. I can have my programmers take a look and maybe tell what is happening.

[i8degrees]

I've e-mailed you the SURVInstall.log file.

[i8degrees]

Are the programmers still investigating the issue?

[Jason]

They looked at the log file and said basically it just terminates. They advised to load the latest version of windows installer and if you are not already try downloading the latest version of Carlson from the web and install it instead of from a disk. Hope that works for you.

[i8degrees]

The installer that I downloaded from the web from http://update.carlsonsw.com/updates.php appears to have worked, but not as expected. The bug was still present as it was before.

I had left the computer station for 4-8 hours and when I had returned, I noticed that the installer was exactly where it was previous times -- no open windows, but an installer process in the process list that was at 0% CPU usage and 10-30MB memory usage. I forget what process I killed, but after killing said process the installer magically came to life and began installing the software.

After the installation dialog was complete, I had a working copy of Carlson Survey 2007 with no problems validating the serial number issued to it. I am still confused about what exactly happened the previous times, but it appears that the thread simply goes to sleep after the initial installation dialogs, and is unable to awake until the end user takes some unknown action.

I don't know if virtualization is the cause of the problem, but I have not ever whitnessed this scenario happening, and I've had it installed on the same box, without virtualization, same OS, same config. One suggestion is to look at the registration information sent back to your servers on my installation and see if there's anything "odd" attached -- I wonder just how well the virtualization covers up the reality of OS being on top of another host.

On a related note, Your programmers noticed exactly what I noticed and said in the opening thread about the thread terminating. I chuckled because I am a software programmer as well. At least we are on the same page

On a unrelated note, the performance of the virtual machine (VirtualBox, Ubuntu Linux host, Windows Server 2003 guest; remotely accessed over 100mbps LAN with RDPv5&6) is quite surprisingly FAST. I use Carlson Survey every day for 8-10 hours inside a native Windows XP environment at the office and I really can't tell the difference between the two, even while using the 3D Cube feature with surface modeling on 500 acre topographic survey tracts. I am quite happy to report this as it is promising news for consolidation purposes.