Too many decompression errors!!!

[Peder]

What is the story with decompression errors?
I did a build yesterday on diskettes for testing on a Windows 95 machine without a working CD. Disk 2 of 6 got a decompression error. I copied the original disk2 file to another floppy and got as far as disk 3 before another error. I then did an entirely new build and copied the six files to these same six floppies and got a decompression error on disk 5! Can ANYONE explain what causes this? I am going back to the VB setup tool if I can't get past this! I used to get similar, seemingly random, errors with SUF4 but thought this would be fixed in 5. I'm using new AT&T formatted diskettes that have otherwise had a very low error rate.



[This message has been edited by Peder (edited 05-25-2000).]

[Support]

This is the first time anyone has ever reported a problem with floppy disk distribution with Setup Factory 5.0. It is possible that your floppy drive is dirty or misaligned. You would need to try building on a different machine or install a new floppy drive to verify that it is not your drive that is the problem. What if you build your disk set to the hard drive as 1.44 MB data segments and then run the setup from there? For example, on the Output screen choose C:\Output as your Output Folder and choose 1.44 MB Disks as your Media Target. This way you can verify that the setup works from the hard drive and if so you can copy the Setup.exe, Setup.2, etc. files to floppy disks after. This would also be a good diagnostic test.

[Peder]

Originally posted by Support:
It is possible that your floppy drive is dirty or misaligned. You would need to try building on a different machine or install a new floppy drive to verify that it is not your drive that is the problem.

OK! I was able to copy the 6 files to a Zip disk and install successfully from that. Could it be the floppy drive on the target machine? It's several years older than my development workstation. THANKS!

[Ted]

Floppy drives are VERY unreliable. It could be anything from dirty heads to dust to magnetic interference to misaligned heads. If the problem occurs on all systems you try the setup.exe on, it is likely YOUR drive. If it occurs sporadically, it could be THEIR drive or still possibly YOUR drive is even slightly out of alignment.