unasociate

[Jailor]

Can anyone tell me if I am formatting my laptop that has Railmaster installed on it, do I have to unasociate it first or will the licence still be valid on that machine?

[Augustus Caesar]

When I did that on a laptop a short while back I made sure I deregistered it first. The reason? I had a couple of complications when installing once before that when I failed to deregister and had to call support to get them to do it for me.

So, purely for simplicity I would deregister it first every time as the code they drop on the laptop when registering will be lost when you do the format anyway.

The registration may have changed where they allow you to format and not have to reregister but I would personally not rely on that.

[Jailor]

Cheers to the Roman Empire! Thanks for your help.

[Graskie]

The Romans didn't do that for us, though!

[Fishmanoz]

You can in fact deregister then reregister RM as many times as you like on as many PCs/laptops as you like, including the same laptop with a newly formatted hard drive. The only limitation is that it can only be registered on one machine at any one time. 

So AC is most certainly correct, and more so. 

And if disaster strikes and your machine falls over while it has the registered copy, all you have to do is contact RM Support and they will sort it out for you. 

[Michael_A]

A question though. If you do that what happens to any locally configured data, e.g. track layouts, added photos of locos, speed calibration settings, routes created etc. Is there a dat file you need to save and copy to the new PC?

[Yelrow]

A Question from somebody who has never formatted a computer to his knowledge in 40 years, why would you need to. I can understand if you change your computer, but with de fragging and the massive hard drive space, why would you need to format. Am i missing something i should be doing, john

[Fishmanoz]

Yes, you certainly do need to save your own data. Track plans have a PLN extension. You loco pictures will be saved in the appropriate directory you put them in. Your locos have the extension MDB, is it locos.mdb. And there is another group to save but can't think of what it is. Finally, your Rsilmaster.ini file may be useful. 

[Fishmanoz]

Sometimes, over time, your a windows files can become corrupted and some advocate reformatting and reinstalling everything to start agai . Not something to be undertaken lightly as you will need to save all of your data to copy back in afterwards and you have to reinstall Windows and all of your programs. 

[Yelrow]

Thanks, how interesting, never happened on any of my machines, put that down to decent security and firewall. john

[idlemarvel]

There was an old HRMS forum entry which gave instructions on what to back up to save your RM data.

I have reproduced it below and added some files of my own.

Backup (from RailMasterSupport forum entry)

“If you want to backup data that you have created within RailMaster, the files to copy are as follows:-

Resource.mdb This contains all of the locos you set up
Groups.dat         This contains details of loco groups you set up
*.pln                      These are track plan files
*.prg                     These are RailMaster program files for automation

You should never copy the entire RailMaster folder onto another PC or the latter installation will not work. RailMaster must be installed properly from the CD or downloaded setup file. Only then can you copy the above files into the new RailMaster folder.

The program folder which contains all of the above files (assuming you did not alter any of the default setup properties) is C:Program Files (x86)RailMaster.  On Windows XP and earlier, it is just C:Program FilesRailMaster.

The next major update of RailMaster will contain a backup routine to automate this. In the mean time you can either copy the files manually, or if you know your way around batch files you could create a small batch file to copy the required files onto another medium e.g.:-

Copy "c:program files (x86)railmasterresource.mdb" e:
Copy "c:program files (x86)railmastergroups.dat" e:
Copy "c:program files (x86)railmaster*.pln" e:
Copy "c:program files (x86)railmaster*.prg" e:

The above batch file assumes your backup medium (e.g. USB memory stick) is located on drive e: although you can change this in the batch file if it a different drive letter.  Batch files can be edited in the Windows Notepad text editor and saved with the file name something.bat.  You can then create a shortcut to the file and run it from a single icon.”

I would add to this list:

railmaster.ini                      if you have made any changes to these settings

settings.dat                        changes to settings made using graphical interface

schedule.dat                      schedule of programs to be run at specified times

progbuttons.dat               floating button bar definitions

 

Copy "c:program files (x86)railmasterrailmaster.ini" e:
Copy "c:program files (x86)railmastersettings.dat" e:
Copy "c:program files (x86)railmasterschedule.dat" e:
Copy "c:program files (x86)railmasterprogbuttons.dat" e:

[Michael_A]

Wow! What can I say, thank you so much, appreciated. Saved to my PC railway notes folder!

[Fishmanoz]

John, has little to do with security, it has to do with reading and writing over time leading to the odd thing not happening perfectly. Then there are things like the registry entries becoming corrupted as you use your machine and instal things then remove them etc. 

[RDS]

@idlemarvel

That is a great summary.  It would be nice to have a special section somewhere? within the forum to be able to keep responses such as this one for reference.

[Augustus Caesar]

Ah but they did... it just wasn't recorded anywhere... :-)

When I was Emperor we recorded everything so somebody obviously changed the rules!!

[Augustus Caesar]

Good question but there are many answers... some of which have been noted above.

Defragging has become a thing of the past and really is not necessary from Windows XP onward. I will briefly explain...

When installing, say, seven pieces of software and you then decide to uninstall the third one for example and then the fifth you will have spaces on your drive where those programs sat. If you defrag the drive the other programs in positions four, six and seven are moved down the drive to fill those gaps but stay in order. If you install a new program which is larger than those spaces it will first fill them and finish installing at the end of the queue of programs already there. No gaps. However, when reading those programs the drive may slow down a tiny bit as it has to skip over the others to get to the next relevant piece of data to run the program. So, in the days before XP defragging was relevant as the data storage areas were 32K in size and if a small amount of data was saved to one of those, say 10K, the next part of that (22K) was lost as it could not be saved to. Now those areas are only 4K and that 10K file would take up two 4K blocks and half a third block losing only 2K at the back of it. With larger drives and faster spin rates, faster processors and the likes defragging is generally classed as a waste of time unless you CONSTANTLY install and uninstall many different programs etc. all the time.

Reasons to format are bad sectors or bad clusters on the drive, irretrievable operation of Windows, damaged boot sector that cannot be repaired, damaged or corrupt MFT (master file table) and many more. Sometimes these errors can be fixed but occasionally they cannot without formattig first. One of the obvious ones, of course, is a new virus/trojan/spyware or malware file/s that cannot be removed with excellent software or even manually within the registry. This often happens and remember that each of the above are different to the other and not one single anti-virus product will remove all those objects from your PC/laptop whether paid for or not. Spyware and malware and the odd trojan will require Spybot and Malwarebytes to finish the job of other software you have.

Eventually your registry will become a tad full of odd extraneous code and keys and some folk use registry cleaning programs to sort this out. Oh dear… disaster waiting to happen! They are a total waste of space. Some programs don’t fully uninstall so you’re better off looking for its installation directory and deleting what’s left manually and leaving the registry alone unless you know how to delete the rest of the loose stuff manually there too. Your system will not suffer with this loose stuff lying around in the registry so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Vendors need to make money so advertise stuff that’s not really doing much behind the scenes and they rely on you thinking it is doing a load of magic because you can’t see it happening. While this isn’t a case for formatting a drive the registry CAN be easily corrupted and unrecoverable thus meaning a data saving job for your saved files and then a reformat.

Just as an addition… a firewall will NEVER protect you from viruses and trojans etc… this is down to software programs I have mentioned catching these during download or install or simple execution of a run file like a .exe file. A firewall will stop malicious attacks to your system via external hackers and one of the best you have is based in any router you have for your broadband service. The better the router - the better the firewall. This is a hardware version which cannot be altered by attempting to rewrite its code as it is hardcoded into the chipset inside the router. A software firewall, any one of them, CAN be altered by anyone attempting to do so.

A long and protracted answer I know but I hope it allows one to see where us techies are checking your systems for all those reasons to reinstall Windows and save your valuable data. I, however, only reinstall if absolutely necessary and also if I KNOW that the system and end user will benefit from it.

[Jailor]

Well written, I was going to explain myself but really do not have the time to write all of the above.

I have backed up all the files I want (I do this anyway regularly) and will  re format the laptop so it will be running like a dream again. My reason for doing this was due to the fact I have bought my wife a new laptop for her birthday in two weeks (Don't tell her anyone) and I will  have her old one just to run Rail Master. I must point out she was long overdue a new one and she keeps messing with it causing all sorts of problems.

BTW I now have all of my points and motors working via ADS8, Really pleased as i was getting worn out charging around the track changing points. Hope everyone has a good day today.

Ron.

[Jailor]

Many thanks for taking the time to let us all know about this, I would have missed a few folders.

Ron

[Graskie]

I suppose it all took place in the Forum, AC.

[Graskie]

Very interested in your long monologue, AC. I use Windows 7 and regularly defrag my registry. I also still defrag my hard disk fairly often, especially if a check shows anything up to 10% fragmented. Are you saying I'm wasting my time?

[idlemarvel]

@RDS

That would be a nice feature for the forum, but as it's taken many months for Hornby to get the forum back to being useable again after the recent website update, I think asking for any change such as this would be optimistic! :-)   

Hopefully HRMS have made a note and the official documentation will be updated, or maybe they will provide the backup routine mentioned in their forum entry in the next release.

[Fishmanoz]

A manual amendment with this detail would be good with the next update. And while doing that, the same detail as in the forum for changing loco address would help too - being more explicit about needing to write the new address to the decoder. 

[Augustus Caesar]

I couldn't honestly answer that as I was no longer around after 14AD and the changes apparently were done by a third party so I read in my current incarnation. No mention of the place where it happened though... however, as we are part of a forum it is not beyond the bounds of coincidence that it is true... :-)

[Augustus Caesar]

Windows 7 automatically defrags your hard drive on a weekly basis at 1am on a Wednesday morning if I rmember correctly. You can change this if you like and stop defragging altogether. Some files CAN be become defragmented and some of the data spread across the drive but my point is that the drives today are fast enough, processors are fast enough and so are the system cache areas so where a search for a file or program is required the system already knows where the data is by indexing when programs are installed and data saved. This is one of reasons your drive seems to be spinning on a semi permanent basis because it is constantly being indexed and read by the system.

If by defragging your own drive you notice a good few seconds between reads and writes before and after that defrag then maybe it is good to do it. I don't believe so as the amount of data you would need to be constantly saving or erasing is huge. If you do not do a massive amount of saving and erasing of data or files each day then it is hardly worth the while doing this. You will hardly note ANY real time difference in the aftermath fo a defrag unless you do constantly save data in large amounts.

I would never advocate you not doing a defrag but I honestly do not see any benefit when doing it these days. If you have left the default defrag settings in Win 7 then your system will do it automatically while you are getting on with stuff at the 1am slot on that Wednesday each week. The system is intelligent enough these days to do this discreetly whereas XP etc used to be extremely slow at it. Some systems used to take many many hours to complete the job.

I have been in the business of PC repair and installation for many years and while some techies are way too particular with their systems and go over the top with fixes and speed checks etc I do not. I simply KNOW what a PC of any make or model is capable of and won't push the systems too far.

Settings of this nature are personal and as I said I won't advocate doing the job outlined above but I would never go out of my way at any time to do this.

Just as a finishing point my c drive is 8% fragmented and the other three are 0. So what do I do? Nothing... :-) Never have and never will since I did it in Vista and once in Win 7 for a client who insisted on it... coz he was paying... but I still advised him not to... hey ho!

I may have left you with a choice to make and I really don't want to convince you to not do something you are used to. If you do use large chunks of data and keep altering or moving stuff around then feel free to carry on... the main thing is - it won't do any harm.

[gilbo2]

The computer needs to be switched on for the 1AM defrag to work?