Computer Services
Stanton/Wilmington Campus
PageMaker 7.0.1 Install Notes

Typical Ranting by Weave

Years after I hassled with Pagemaker 6.5 install and Adobe still can't seem to figure out that it's a no-no to write crap into the program directory. Idiots... You'd think by now they could write a logo compliant app, but no. We have this great advice from them (let everyone run as Administrator). Then we have this press release from October 2001, ALMOST AN ENTIRE YEAR AGO, bragging that one -- get it one -- of their products out of their entire suite of software is Windows logo compliant. I hope they go out of business...

Installation Diary and Observations

• There's a 7.0.1 udpate that is supposed to improve XP compatibility.
• Defaults file is written into the program directory. I guess the concept of saving settings in HKCU or %appdata% is a concept that an Adobe programmer can't grasp. :-( 7.0.1 update doesn't fix this.
• Install doesn't create all needed keys in HKLM, instead relying on the pm70reg.txt file to populate it whenever the app runs BY A USER (sigh). This can probably be gotten around by manually applying those keys with regedit in between the winstall snapshots.
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\PageMaker70\USENGLSH\PageMaker70 contains a path to the conf file.
• Inside the pagemaker program directory, is a pm70reg.txt file that contains default paths IN CASE OF MISSING KEYS. For HKCU, those keys will be missing by definition on first use. Changing that helped (a prefs file showed up where I moved it too) and it did cut down the number of errors thrown due to not being able to write it, but I still got a few anyway.

Installation Steps

First attempt (did not work)

This did not work at all. My theory is that there's more that gets created in HKLM than just what is in the pm70reg.txt file.

1. Install Pagemaker on a machine, can be a dirty machine as long as it doesn't have other Adobe products installed on it.
2. Run pagemaker as administrator, then quit.
3. Browse to HKLM\Software\Adobe and export that to a file where you can get to it easily during a snapshot install.
4. Copy the pmreg.txt file to someplace you can get to during install, and rename to pm70.reg
5. Edit the pm70.reg file, search for paths with .cnf and change it to point to somewhere more palattable.
6. Ensure you have a copy of the 7.0.1 update handy (like in winstall share on your own PC)
7. Now Boot a clean install machine
8. run discoz from winstall LE and take initial snapshot
9. Add following dirs to wildcard exclude paths (all in %sysemdir%): system32\wbem\, system32\catroot\, system32\catroo2, and prefetch
10. CD to CD and run setup from pagemaker directory
    • If you choose custom setup, ensure you scroll down in choices box. I didn't do that first time and hence the templates didn't install. :-(
    • Don't display the readme when prompted, no use polluting the snapshot any more than we have to.
11. CD to acrobat distiller dir on CD and run setup
12. Run the 7.0.1 update program
13. Connect to test computer from another computer (via C$) and edit the pm70reg.txt file. Search for .CNF default paths and change appropriately.
14. regedit /s pm70.reg (created above)
15. regedit /s the hkml reg file you extracted above
16. Run discoz and perform the after snapshot
17. Go back to workstation with winstall on it and edit the msi file
    1. set it to install only per machine
    2. Go into files and sort by target directory, delete files in appdir, appdatafolder
    3. Go into registry section and add keys up to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\PageMaker\7.0\Registration and then add the following values;
       "NOTENOW"="0"
       "NOTELAT"="0"
       "NOTENEV"="1"
       Purpose of this is to squash initial dialog box asking them to register. We will have a plethora of students using pagemaker and they are not authorized to register the software on our behalf, of course.
    4. Expand component tree, go to bottom of list and work up. Delete References to catroot2, wbem, anything in administrator profile that may have gotten into there. This is horribly tedious and boring. :-( One way to help this process out is to delete these files from the install BEFORE taking the after snapshot. (Who cares if you render the machine unusable if you make a mistake, it's a test box!) Actually, since this is my second package done with this tech, it's probably best to just add prefect, catroot, catroot2, and wbem to the exclude list
    5. And ... if that's not enough, it *STILL* won't work. You have to launch it the first time as an administrator. So after the install in the script, cd to the pagemaker dir and start pm70.exe :-(

Like fifth attempt

• Boot a clean install machine
• Authenticate a UNC to your wininstall share
• \\yourbox\wininstall\discover\discoz.exe
• Add following dirs to wildcard exclude paths (all in %sysemdir%) system32\wbem\*, system32\catroot*\*, lastgood\* and prefetch\* and then profiles\administrator\application data\*
• Take snapshot
• CD to CD and then pagemaker directory and run setup
  • If you choose custom setup, ensure you scroll down in choices box. I didn't do that first time and hence the templates didn't install. :-(
  • Don't display the readme when prompted, no use polluting the snapshot any more than we have to.
  • CD to acrobat distiller dir on CD and run setup
  • Run the 7.0.1 update program
  • Connect to test computer from another computer (via C$) and edit the pm70reg.txt file. Search for .CNF default paths and change appropriately.
  • cd to c:\program files\adobe\pagemaker 7.0\
  • start pm70.exe
  • Quit pagemaker
  • Run after snapshot in discoz
  • Go back to workstation with winstall on it and edit the msi file
    1. set it to install only per machine
    2. Go into files and sort by target directory, delete files in appdir, appdatafolder
    3. Go into registry section and add keys up to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\PageMaker\7.0\Registration and then add the following values;
       "NOTENOW"="0"
       "NOTELAT"="0"
       "NOTENEV"="1"
       Purpose of this is to squash initial dialog box asking them to register. We will have a plethora of students using pagemaker and they are not authorized to register the software on our behalf, of course.
    4. Expand component tree, go to bottom of list and work up. Delete References to catroot2, wbem, anything in administrator profile that may have gotten into there. This is horribly tedious and boring. :-( One way to help this process out is to delete these files from the install BEFORE taking the after snapshot. (Who cares if you render the machine unusable if you make a mistake, it's a test box!) Actually, since this is my second package done with this tech, it's probably best to just add prefect, catroot, catroot2, and wbem to the exclude list

Sixth attempt

this is getting old, another failure, sounds like it's going to have to run at least once as administrator with no reg key fiddling going on. So perhaps snapshot, install products, snapshot, ensure no inaccessible files in .msi, edit registry in msi to point prefs to right place, then during install, apply msi, start app as administrator, maybe send keystrokes to it to get it to shut down cleanly, then replace pm70reg.txt file -- I hope.

Well, this failed too. Says product not registered. Also wanting to restore dir My Documents\My Ebooks -- which I can't find in the winstall package.

Next attemp I'm just going to try to get it working without the winstall (manually) to see if it's even possible. I swear I got it working before manually, but who knows... :-(

Seventh Attempt

Thank god for vmware and repeatable resume..

Running pagemaker install manually, did that, applied update, now it won't even start at all, even with administrator... arrgh...

After about 15 attempts

No exaggeration -- I give up. I swear no matter what I do, I can't get a re-packaged pagemaker to work correctly. So I'm just going to write a vbscript to throw sendkeys at it.... Sigh....

Commands to put into a batch file for auto-install