Installing Zionworx on Windows 7 (and probably on Vista)

[brainier]

This note is for brand new installations only, not for upgrades (though you cannot upgrade to Windows 7 in the European Union anyway), and not for reinstallations of the software. And finally this is an issue only if you do not install the sample database/backgrounds during the installation.

When you install Zionworx for the first time on Windows 7 and then run the software it tells you that you need to be an administrator on the first run of the software to do the registration. So you right click the program icon on the start menu and you choose Run as administrator. Zionworx starts and configures its initial settings file, bible settings file and database (if you installed without the sample database). These are created by the account that the software is running as and set as full control for the members of the administrators group on the local machine and read only for all other users.

When you start the software for the second and subsequent times, the software errors on exit saying it cannot save the settings file. This is because it is read only. If you install the sample database during installation the c:\ProgramData\zionworx\2.6 folder is made during installation with the correct permissions. If you do not install the sample database then the folder is not created during installation and only created when you first exit the program. The problem is that the first time you exit the program you are running it as the administrator (as you needed to do this to enter your registration details). Therefore on subsequent runs of the program, the settings files and database etc cannot be written to.

To fix this error delete the entire c:\programdata\zionworx folder (not that this folder is hidden, so just type c:\programdata into the search box on the start menu to show it). Then start the Zionworx program - as you have already registered the software you will not be prompted to do so again, and therefore the settings files and empty database will be recreated with the correct permissions allowing you to edit the database and customise the settings.

As a bug fix, the next version ought to set the c:\programdata\zionworx folder to Full Control for all users at the time it is created if it needs creating (it does this if created during setup, just not if done during first run of the software).