F.Y.I.: Invalid registry entry

[David Roesch]

Considering all of the user woes posted here (mine included) regarding Digi's extremely crufty, cludged implementation of PTFree for PCs, I thought I would offer up the following little trivial tidbit of information. It actually has nothing to do with the program itself, but it does give a little insight into how little Digi may know or care about coding for the Windows OS.

The PTFree installation writes the following to the default value of the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersi on\App Paths\Pro Tools Free:
"C:\Program Files\Digidesign\Pro Tools\Pro Tools(R) Free.exe" (Note the spaces between the words and the (R) "registered trademark" symbol). The program that actually gets installed is "C:\Program Files\Digidesign\Pro Tools\ProToolsFree.exe" (No spaces, no registered trademark symbol).

While this doesn't cause any problems related to running the program (as far as I know), it does create a broken registry entry. It might also lead you to ask "If they can't even correctly register the program with Windows during the install, what kind of integration with the OS can I expect from the program itself .

[This message has been edited by David Roesch (edited November 06, 2000).]

[Kenn LeGault]

As you point out, registry entries are made by the installer, not the PT Free application. This is an issue related more to InstallShield and Installer scripts than anything else. The software developers for PT Free are not the same guys who put the installer together, and I don't see why you'd draw *any* conclusions about the PT Free app or Digidesign's audio engine by looking at a benign registry entry. And speaking of the installer, I thought it was pretty slick and easy to use.

As far as claiming that PT Free is "extremely crufty/cludged" I would again say that my experience (as well as many other people I've read on the DUC)has been great. PT Free rocks on my Gateway 9300 laptop running Win98SE as well as on my Compaq Deskpro PII. It's unfortunate that some users are having problems, but from what I've read so far it appears that many of the problems are due to sound cards & hardware configs that haven't been tested/approved yet, and due to a lot of "pilot errors." There are many posts from people that are seeing great results with PT Free on their systems -- how could this be the result of shoddy development or an inferior product?

PT Free was built from a solid, high-performance product called PT LE. Most of the PT Free compatibility and performance issues I've read on the DUC are related to using "generic" wave drivers supplied by the various manufacturers of audio cards. Wave drivers are simply not a good way to do "Pro Audio" but they are ubiquitous and they allowed PT Free to run on as large a variety of hardware as possible. Over time these compatibility issues will be resolved and more and more configurations/cards will tested and sanctioned by Digidesign.

You may think that Digidesign doesn't "know or care about coding for the Windows OS" but that is simply unfair and inaccurate. Digidesign has some of the best software developers in the business, Mac or Windows or otherwise.

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Kenn LeGault
Digidesign

[This message has been edited by Kenn LeGault (edited November 09, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Kenn LeGault (edited November 09, 2000).]

[Rookwood]

The registry entry was indeed generated by the InstallShield software.

Though the path is never used by any other Digidesign products, the path has been corrected for future releases.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.


Chris Now
SCM Engineer
Digidesign