[fptex] fpTeX updating problem under Windows 2000

[George N. White III]

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Ivailo Stoyanov wrote:

> I was happy to hear about the lately resolved bugs, but when I tried to
> update my installation (according to the instructions @
> http://www.fptex.org/upgrade.html), I faced a strange problem in step 4:
>
> The tree with uninstalled/installed packages is completely missing (see
> the attached picture -- ``ClipBoard-1.jpg''), so I can't select anything
> for further installing/updating.

This happened to me on Win98 after I had started selecting the packages to
update (from a TeX Live 2003 full install).  The Win98 problem occurred
late in the day.  The next morning I found the system had seriously
overheated and has since been junked, but since then I updated a WinXP
system and a Win95 system without problems.  I also had a disk failure
with another (newer) PC while installing a TL2003 pre-release.  I use
ConTeXt.  In addition to the mklsr runs, the early TL configuration had
some bugs that resulted in failure of kpathsea to find texexec.ini, which
triggers a brute-force search that took 20 minutes to complete with lots
of disk activity.

I suspect that some PC's may not have adequate cooling to handle the
extended disk I/O and processing load of a TL2003 install.  Can you repeat
the problem?  Repeatable problems tend to be software.  Hardware problems
such as overheating (e.g., inadequate cooling in a poorly configured PC)
tends not to be reproducible.

--
George N. White III  <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
  Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada