e link (installation of software)

[John-353940]

hi

do you need a disc drive on your laptop for the elink controller

[RDS]

You need a disk drive on your laptop for the laptop to work. elink needs RailMaster, which is loaded onto the Disk Drive. So yes, you need a Disk Drive.

[LTSR_NSE]

Just to clarify you don’t need an optical Disc drive, since railmaster should be installed using the most recent version, downloaded from the internet. However as RDS states you do need a hard Disk drive or other storage device (e.g. solid state etc.) to install railmaster onto.

[Fishmanoz]

Mods, could you please add to the title “Installation and Operation”.

Sorry RDS, short answer is “no”. To use an eLink, download and install the latest version of RM from the link, as LT has said.

If you’ve bought your eLink second hand, you will also need to purchase your own RM licence, unless the licence that comes with it is unused (if already installed and activated by the original purchaser, it can’t be passed to a third party). You can purchase online after trial installation.

AC has reported some time ago instances where it was first necessary to install from the CD then upgrade from the link. Hopefully this is no longer the case for anyone as most modern laptops no longer have a CD drive.

[P-Henny]

AC has reported some time ago instances where it was first necessary to install from the CD then upgrade from the link.

 

 

The big issue with using an old CD is getting trapped by the '90 Day' evaluation period check. If you install RM from an old CD, the first time the RM program is run, it does an 'update' check and reports that a newer version is available. If the user follows that option to upgrade (or installs the newer version manually from a download), the RM program knows the file date of the version installed from the CD and knows that it is more than '90 Days' older than the new version in the upgrade. This immediately triggers the '90 Day Evaluation Period has expired' message and prevents RM from starting, even if it has been installed on a PC that has NEVER had RM on it before. This can not be fixed by uninstalling the CD version and re-installing from the download. This is because the PC serial number has now been stored on the HRMS server against the earlier installed RM version. HRMS's license key policing is very agressive, to prevent pirating of the software.

This issue has been previously documented on this forum, which is where I became aware of it.