Windows Registry settings for 1.3.14 Alpha

[DickN]

I've put 1.3.14 Alpha in its own folder alongside the folders for 1.3.13 and 1.3.12. I've done this on both my systems: XP (SP3) and Vista Home Premium. I keep the older versions so I can tell whether some quirk is new or I just never noticed it before. 12 and 13 are "installed" via the self-extracting installation program and Windows lets me associate either of them with .aup files. 1.3.14 is just there, and I can run it via a shortcut on the desktop, but even if I navigate right to it from "Folder Options" in Control Panel and go through the motions of selecting it for file association, it still doesn't "take". It doesn't even appear on the list - I have to use Browse. I suspect all I have to do is run REGEDIT and add the registry keys to fix this, but I'm not a Windows guru and would appreciate step-by-step instructions for this. I need the instructions for both Windows XP and Vista.

Thanks!

[steve]

Try changing the name of "audacity.exe" for the 1.3.14 version.
Also, it can be useful to create an empty folder called "Portable Settings" in the same directory as the audacity.exe file. That version of Audacity will then have its own "preference" settings, independent of the other versions.

[DickN]

Try changing the name of "audacity.exe" for the 1.3.14 version.

Nope, didn't make any difference.

Previously, I did try renaming the .exe's for the other two, and they just disappeared from the "file association" menu. Then I had no versions of Audacity in the menu, and browsing for the Alpha version still just went through the motions without making the association.

[steve]

I expect that you realise that this is really a "Windows problem" rather than an "Audacity problem".

There may be other ways to deal with this issue, but here's my opinion on the question:

The way that I would deal with it would be to set one version of Audacity as an "installed" version, and use that as your regular workhorse version. All/any other versions I would use as "portable installations" and not associate projects or files with these other versions.

The first job is to clean out Audacity settings from the registry as it has probably got a bit messy in there. Probably the safest way to do that is to uninstall all versions of Audacity from the computer, then use a non-aggressive registry cleaner (such as the one in the free program Ccleaner http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner ).

I would probably choose the current beta version (1.3.13) to be the installed version (when 1.3.14 is released it can be installed over the top of 1.3.13).
Then, if you want the other versions for testing, download the ZIP versions of 1.3.12 and 1.3.14.
To keep the "Preferences" for these non-installed versions separate from each other and separate from the installed version, create an empty folder called "Portable Settings" in each of the extracted ZIP folders. See here for more info: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Porta ... _and_later

For ease of launching the programs you may want to create Desktop shortcuts to each of the .exe files.
For opening projects in either of the non-installed versions just use the File menu. Windows does not support associations with multiple versions of the same program, so it's only going to cause a mess to fight Windows on that.

[DickN]

Except for the registry cleaning part, I've tried that (i.e., uninstalling the other versions, albeit after backing up the folders). I still couldn't get Windows to set 1.3.14 as the default, so I reinstalled them. I can still "drag" an .aup file to the shortcut icon to open the project in a particular version, "installed" or not, default or not.

Nor am I trying to associate multiple versions with a file type. I can set any one "installed" version as the default, and if I use "open with", all the "installed" versions appear in the menu along with an assortment of unrelated programs (that's normal). The 2 installed Audacity revs both have the same name, but I know where they are in the list. The snag is that the version I want to choose as the "installed version" is 1.3.14 Alpha, and that one doesn't appear on the menu. It's the best-working version I've used so far. I just figured somebody on the team would know how to do this since they wrote the installation program(s) for the released versions.

[steve]

Except for the registry cleaning part,

I suspect that is the critical part that you will need to do.
While no versions of Audacity are installed it will be safe to remove all Audacity registry entries - but if you edit the registry manually, please be careful
After that, reboot.
You should then be able to set up file associations with your preferred Audacity version.

[steve]

Topic split to here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 20&t=57354