BW9 installation forced Flash installation and crashes the browser

[DavidR]

I have no idea what's going on here, but I just want to report my own experience. I have BW 9 installed on a Windows 7 Pro 64-bit computer. I had no problem with the installation. The help videos run fine. I'm not sure whether I have Macromedia Flash on the computer. It does not appear in the Windows Uninstall list of programs, but there are two entries for Adobe Flash Player 12, one ActiveX and one Plugin; perhaps that's it.

Brainout, I can't begin to offer a solution to your problem, but clearly it is not widespread at all, or other users would have been hollering too. Is it possible that your BW 9 installation disk is defective?

[Glenn Weaver]

Hi Brainout,

I assure you that this is not a widespread problem. The default BibleWorks installation process was designed (through much thought and testing) to be as trouble-free as possible, and has been working without problems for most users.

As a reminder, the forums is not a place to provide suggestions or for technical support issues. Our Customer Service team does not always monitor the forums, so your concerns will likely go unheard. The forum is designed to provide a place where users can ask questions of one another on how to use the program.

Please contact our Customer Service team for help with the installation problems that you are experiencing, and they will do their best to help you.

Blessings,
Glenn

[brainout]

I have no idea what's going on here, but I just want to report my own experience. I have BW 9 installed on a Windows 7 Pro 64-bit computer. I had no problem with the installation. The help videos run fine. I'm not sure whether I have Macromedia Flash on the computer. It does not appear in the Windows Uninstall list of programs, but there are two entries for Adobe Flash Player 12, one ActiveX and one Plugin; perhaps that's it.

Brainout, I can't begin to offer a solution to your problem, but clearly it is not widespread at all, or other users would have been hollering too. Is it possible that your BW 9 installation disk is defective?

Okay, maybe my post was too long so you missed some of what I said:

1. It's Win7 32-bit, not 64.
2. The problem is when you install, and don't have Flash 10. The installer insists on installing Flash 10, which is now OUTDATED.
3. The problem with the updates offering to install before the selected databases and modules have installed, means you get ALL the updates without having had the opportunity of first setting up a checkpoint, since this is the initial installation. So you cannot remove all the updates which don't apply to the databases/modules you wanted and selected during the ticking-off process of the updates itself. ALL of them get installed on your machine, even when you didn't check off the boxes.
4. So if when YOU installed YOUR version of BW9 to your machine and YOU didn't elect for those updates to be installed, then YOU didn't have the problem.

5. Maybe when YOU installed YOUR version of BW9, you already had Flash 10 on YOUR machine, so it didn't install on yours.

And I never said there was a problem watching the videos. I said that I tried to stop Flash 10 from installing the second time -- since the first time I had elected the videos but didn't want Flash 10 -- the second time, it STILL insisted on installing Flash 10, even though I did not select video installation.

These are bugs. They need to be fixed. They are bugs in the installer, not the program itself. Just fix the INSTALLER, that's all my beloved Bibleworks has to do.

I say all this because people come to me after they buy Bibleworks, as a result of seeing my Youtube and vimeo videos. I want to fend off problems for them beforehand. And, for myself. None of us has the luxury of wasting (in my case) nearly a week fixing the problems the installer creates.

The fixes are simple:

A: don't make the installer install Flash of any kind.
B: don't make the installer opt you into updates at the time of initial installation.

It's not hard or expensive to fix A and B. So that C, the Correct Installation can proceed.

Bibleworks is worth dying for. That's why I'm being so blunt.

[jskern]

2. UNINSTALL any Adobe Flash products you have. Someone at BW mistakenly decided to force Macromedia Flash 10 as part of the BW9 installation, even when you don't choose to install the many (usually helpful) videos. This is a horror, because your browser and Windows and everyone else goes bonkers if you don't have the latest Flash version. So best to just uninstall ALL versions of Flash in browsers and in Programs, prior to installing BW9. For if the (old, therefore wrong version) of BW's Flash installs and other Adobe products are already installed, you'll be cleaning your computer of glitches for days. This isn't BW's fault, it's Adobe's, but BW folks should know how notoriously bad Adobe is about uninstalling or not recognizing a LATER VERSION of Flash is already installed.

9. DO NOT INSTALL THE UPDATES. Even if you don't select an item, it installs anyway. As a result, this reinstallation isn't working, as I cannot UNinstall previously installed updates and must now delete everything and do it all a fourth time, all the above steps. This glitch does NOT happen if you just finish installation WITHOUT updates, and then go for them post-installation. I didn't have this problem on my other BW9 installations, as I never got a message prompting me for updates prior to initial installation. So it's a bug, because if it updates prior to installation, then it ASSumes you want all the updates, even if you did NOT check them.
.

Whew!

Thanks for the highly detailed reply. I have to say, if I had to go through all you went through, I would've given up; I am seriously not into backing up entire drives and rooting out unwanted detritus from my pc....

Luckily, I have no prior versions of BW on my computer (BW9 is my first), nor have I bought any unlock codes (I was waiting until BW arrived and was installed & registered before I updated or added any modules). Can I take it then, that my biggest concern will be the update glitch and the Flash 10 install?

The update glitch seems simple enough to avoid--thanks to your very clear instructions--but I'm concerned about your suggestion #2. Is there something different about FLASH 10 that makes it more difficult to uninstall compared to the newer versions? I mean, why not just load BW9 and, if all my browsers "go bonkers", then "uninstall any Adobe Flash products" I have?

Cheers,
jsk

[MBushell]

Okay, maybe my post was too long so you missed some of what I said:

1. It's Win7 32-bit, not 64.
2. The problem is when you install, and don't have Flash 10. The installer insists on installing Flash 10, which is now OUTDATED.
3. The problem with the updates offering to install before the selected databases and modules have installed, means you get ALL the updates without having had the opportunity of first setting up a checkpoint, since this is the initial installation. So you cannot remove all the updates which don't apply to the databases/modules you wanted and selected during the ticking-off process of the updates itself. ALL of them get installed on your machine, even when you didn't check off the boxes.
4. So if when YOU installed YOUR version of BW9 to your machine and YOU didn't elect for those updates to be installed, then YOU didn't have the problem.

5. Maybe when YOU installed YOUR version of BW9, you already had Flash 10 on YOUR machine, so it didn't install on yours.

And I never said there was a problem watching the videos. I said that I tried to stop Flash 10 from installing the second time -- since the first time I had elected the videos but didn't want Flash 10 -- the second time, it STILL insisted on installing Flash 10, even though I did not select video installation.

These are bugs. They need to be fixed. They are bugs in the installer, not the program itself. Just fix the INSTALLER, that's all my beloved Bibleworks has to do.

I say all this because people come to me after they buy Bibleworks, as a result of seeing my Youtube and vimeo videos. I want to fend off problems for them beforehand. And, for myself. None of us has the luxury of wasting (in my case) nearly a week fixing the problems the installer creates.

The fixes are simple:

A: don't make the installer install Flash of any kind.
B: don't make the installer opt you into updates at the time of initial installation.

It's not hard or expensive to fix A and B. So that C, the Correct Installation can proceed.

Bibleworks is worth dying for. That's why I'm being so blunt.

Brainout, I am very sorry that you have had these problems. But I do not want other users who read this forum to conclude that this is something they need to worry about. They really don't. We have thousands of installations out there and we have not run into this sort of problem before. We will certainly take your suggestions into account in the future but there isn't much we can do with the current DVD stock. We produce them in large quantities because it is cheaper and we can't just trash the stock based on one report that we can't reproduce.

Incidentally the only updates applied by the installation program are the executable and a couple of related files. It does not affect installation options at all. It is intended primarily to insure that the user has the latest executable with fixes that did not make it on the DVD set. We will certainly take a close look at A but B is totally harmless and quite essential.

Mike

[Dale A. Brueggemann]

Brainout, I am very sorry that you have had these problems. But I do not want other users who read this forum to conclude that this is something they need to worry about. They really don't.

I've never heard of this happening for anyone else, and have had no such problem with BW installs, whether updating, upgrading, reinstalling, or new install on new computer. BW install always works a charm.

[brainout]

Whew!

Thanks for the highly detailed reply. I have to say, if I had to go through all you went through, I would've given up; I am seriously not into backing up entire drives and rooting out unwanted detritus from my pc....

Luckily, I have no prior versions of BW on my computer (BW9 is my first), nor have I bought any unlock codes (I was waiting until BW arrived and was installed & registered before I updated or added any modules). Can I take it then, that my biggest concern will be the update glitch and the Flash 10 install?

The update glitch seems simple enough to avoid--thanks to your very clear instructions--but I'm concerned about your suggestion #2. Is there something different about FLASH 10 that makes it more difficult to uninstall compared to the newer versions? I mean, why not just load BW9 and, if all my browsers "go bonkers", then "uninstall any Adobe Flash products" I have?

Cheers,
jsk

Well, the problem's severity, depends on what Adobe products you already have on your machine at the time. The first time I installed BW9 on this machine, all my Adobe products were later versions. Since Adobe doesn't install well when other versions are already installed, it took a very long time to root out the leftovers. I had forgotten to uninstall via TuneUp Utilities, so it was harder (Windows uninstall is almost no uninstall).

But once ALL the Adobe products were gone, when I installed BW9 the second time and had to uninstall, I used TuneUp Utilities and the process was much faster: a) just had to use its own uninstaller, then b) merely had to run its Registry cleaner. For another bad thing Adobe uninstall causes, is a lot of leftover registry entries. Really you can't clean them by yourself, you need an interactive Registry cleaner. This is a good idea even absent the Bibleworks installer glitch. You can automate registry cleaning with any number of programs 'out there', but I don't believe in unattended registry cleaning. If you remember Norton System Works, well.. TuneUp Utilities is its successor.

So: if you completely uninstall Adobe products first, then install BW, then use the Windows uninstaller (if unwilling to get TuneUp Utilities), you should have less hassle. Or, if after installing Bibleworks and leaving its version of Flash 10 intact -- if you get a warning from Firefox (etc), just obey what it tells you to do.

So: the only bigtime hassle with Flash, is if you already have it on your machine. For if you do, you probably have Flash 12, which you were pretty much forced to install, a few months ago.

If my post is unclear, yell at me and I'll try to make it better.

[brainout]

Brainout, I am very sorry that you have had these problems. But I do not want other users who read this forum to conclude that this is something they need to worry about. They really don't. We have thousands of installations out there and we have not run into this sort of problem before. We will certainly take your suggestions into account in the future but there isn't much we can do with the current DVD stock. We produce them in large quantities because it is cheaper and we can't just trash the stock based on one report that we can't reproduce.

Incidentally the only updates applied by the installation program are the executable and a couple of related files. It does not affect installation options at all. It is intended primarily to insure that the user has the latest executable with fixes that did not make it on the DVD set. We will certainly take a close look at A but B is totally harmless and quite essential.

Mike

Again, Mike, what you're saying here is not true. I'm sorry to keep on pushing back at you, but I just went through this whole thing FOUR TIMES last week, and I'm very familiar with what actually happens in the installation. Now if you want to claim it's not true though it is true, that's a problem between you and God. My job is to report it, and I have.

I did install BW9 on other machines and this problem did not occur, because a) I did it when Flash 10 was the latest program, and it was already on the machines, and b) because I did NOT agree to the updates which were offered concomittant with the initial installation. So I avoided those glitches.

So to reconcile your claims versus mine, the reason why maybe your 'thousands' of installations didn't report problems, was that most had Flash 10 on and installed when Flash 10 was current, and most didn't opt for the updates at the time of initial installation.

But one thing you really need to revisit: there were maybe 50 updates initially offered when I first installed this to my machine last week. Then again, I have 11 modules for which I had to painfully and slowly manually type the key characters over and over and over again, unable to paste them. So once that horrible process was over, then a huge number of updates were offered, not the few you're claiming.

Again, I'm reporting what happened, you're claiming what I say is untrue. That is a matter between God and you.

[MBushell]

Again, Mike, what you're saying here is not true. I'm sorry to keep on pushing back at you, but I just went through this whole thing FOUR TIMES last week, and I'm very familiar with what actually happens in the installation. Now if you want to claim it's not true though it is true, that's a problem between you and God. My job is to report it, and I have.

I did install BW9 on other machines and this problem did not occur, because a) I did it when Flash 10 was the latest program, and it was already on the machines, and b) because I did NOT agree to the updates which were offered concomittant with the initial installation. So I avoided those glitches.

So to reconcile your claims versus mine, the reason why maybe your 'thousands' of installations didn't report problems, was that most had Flash 10 on and installed when Flash 10 was current, and most didn't opt for the updates at the time of initial installation.

But one thing you really need to revisit: there were maybe 50 updates initially offered when I first installed this to my machine last week. Then again, I have 11 modules for which I had to painfully and slowly manually type the key characters over and over and over again, unable to paste them. So once that horrible process was over, then a huge number of updates were offered, not the few you're claiming.

Again, I'm reporting what happened, you're claiming what I say is untrue. That is a matter between God and you.

I am not claiming that what happened on your computer did not happen. There is no need for accusations or recriminations. All I did was tell you what our experience has been and what the experience of others has been. I have tried to duplicate the scenario that you describe with no success. I am not saying that there is not a problem on your computer. I am just saying that I am unable to reproduce it. Thousands of people have installed BibleWorks 9 with no problems and that includes people who have newer versions of Flash or no Flash at all. I do not know the origin of your problems. Tech support will be happy to work with you to find the problem but this is not the place to do it.

Incidentally, you do not have to type in activation codes during setup. Just copy them all at once to the clipboard. The setup program monitors the clipboard and will enter them all automatically. The updater in the program also has an option at the bottom of the window to load the codes all at once from a single file. There is never a need to type in an activation code, except the executable code in some circumstances. I believe this is described on the setup screen.

The updates I was talking about are the ones done during the installation of BibleWorks. You seem to be talking about the ones you are notified about the first time you run the program after installation. Your describing them as updates during installation initially confused me.

Future installation programs will certainly take a close look at your scenario. But I don't want users reading this thread to be concerned unnecessarily.

I am going to close this thread. If any of you have installation concerns please contact tech support.