The purpose of this thread is to document problems and workarounds for ZTERM under Windows Vista. Most of these issues can be resolved by running as administrator or in XP compability mode. But to go through the process in sequence...

1. Installation. Do this logged in as an administrator. If you try to install it from a standard user (non-administrator) account, it will ask you to elevate to an adminstrator. (It may not pop up a dialog for this - instead the task bar icon may blink or turn orange, in which case you need to right click it, then click Restore, in order to see the elevation dialog.) If you elevate to administrator, or start the installation as administrator, it will install OK.

2. Creating a Profile. If you plan to run ZTERM as a standard user, then you must do this step while logged in as a standard user. The ZTERM shell will launch from a standard user account, and you can then create a profile. On the last screen of the profile creation sequence, check the option to create a desktop icon and also to associate the profile with the Current User. It no longer makes any sense to associate the profile with all users, unless you have multiple administrator users on the computer, since standard users will not be able access the part of the registry where the "all users" profiles are stored.

*** NOTE ON FONT SELECTION: The default font option in the profile is True Type, which works fine (although the Lucida Console font face would be a better choice than Courier New). The bitmap option is not recommended, as the graphic line drawing characters do not work properly in Vista.

3. Launching the Profile. If you launch ZTERM from the desktop icon, it will immediately come up with a dialog saying that your eval period has expired, that looks like this:



The problem here is that the standard user cannot access the part of the Registry where the licensing information is kept. To solve this and get ZTERM licensed, you'll actually have to log in as administrator, then right click on the desktop icon and check the XP Compatibility and Run As Administrator options, as shown here (thanks to Steve Evans for working this out):



4. Installing the License. (This is for locally licensed PC's; we don't have a procedure for PC's licensed via a server dongle.) You must be logged in as administrator to enter the license. (Note: at least one person has reported that using a login with administrator privileges appeared to work when entering the license, but the license didn't "stick". I'm not sure I understand the difference between being administrator, and being a person with administrator privileges, but in case of any doubt, I recommend logging in as the "true administrator" for this step.) Even so, it will prompt you to elevate, with a dialog something like this:



(You just have to trust it and click the Allow option.)

To get to the license screen, launch the profile, then disconnect from the server (yellow telephone in upper left corner) then click Help..Register on menu bar. The license dialog looks something like this:



Make sure you do NOT check (repeat: DON'T check, i.e. leave UNchecked) the option about verifying the license with the server. (If you do check that, you'll get "cannot find Hardlock" errors when you try to run ZTERM, in which case see this thread for instructions:
http://www.microsabio.net/ubb2/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000084

5. Using ZTERM: Finally, once the licensing is done, and you've selected the XP Compatibility and "run as administrator" options (in step 3 above), you should now be able to run ZTERM as a standard user.

We are now just getting a smattering of Vista PCs in the field that need Zterm and are experiencing these problems... I am going to try to install on a pc here. Thanks for hammering out this procedures...

I just have one question: What the Hell?

Does anybody expect an end user to be able to do this? Is Rod going to come up with a better procedure or have you put him out of the emulation business?

I see that ATE has an AMOS option, but i dont know if we should push that as a solution either...

Is there a better, long term solution here for AMOS boxes? (i already hear Ty (or should i call you Rader??) in the background.. yes, sell them linux with ATE... that will work!)

Thanx.

:rolleyes:

I'll check with Rod to see if he has any plans in this area.

Dumb Question:

If one is the administrator, and does the install as such, does zterm give you the appropriate codes? It seems so here...

If that is true, is that the answer, just make the user the administrator? Is that a huge HIPAA/VISTA/ANSI violation?? :rolleyes:

Yes, it should all work fine if you log in as administrator all the time. Doing so, however, doesn't eliminate all the security obstacles and requests to "elevate" as it would have under XP, because under Vista, even the administrator gets downgraded to something more like an ordinary user for most activities. So, while it isn't the blanket solution to all security woes that it was under XP, I don't think running as administrator all the time (especially on a standard workstation) violates any HIPAA/ISO/B.E.E.R. standards.

2 (untested) ideas:

1. Script the above procedure and slipstream it from a central server during automatic updates. This requires a domain update server (or whatever it's called) and automatic updates on the workstations.

2. Use VMware Converter to turn the workstation's OS into a virtual machine before upgrading the workstation to Vista. This requires an already running, fully configured machine. You get to keep your existing ZTerm configuration. The single user converter comes with the free VMware Player that would be used to run the new virtual machine. Once converted you'd probably have to turn off automatic updates on the virtual machine to prevent Windows Genuine Advantage from invalidating it. Back up the files containing the virtual machine after it's created. Then if Windows Genuine Advantage does invalidate the machine you could restore the backup and try again.

Option 1 is simplest for the end users. Option 2 is geekiest:D.

I have a customer trying to get ZTERM permanently licensed on a VISTA PC, without success. (Unfortunately, for this particular situation, I don't have a VISTA PC.)

The basic problem is he doesn't know how to logon as Administrator. He is the only one who uses the machine, and he is automatically logged on when the machine boots up. He tried turning off User Account Controls, but reported that the computer didn't like that change (whatever that means).

All the solutions posted here seem to require getting logged on as Administrator. A quick look at Microsoft's Knowledgebase didn't resolve the situation. The good thing is that when he entered the license code it reset the demo clock, so I guess he could get by in perpetuity by reentering the license code every 30 days, but that's not a very good solution.

Am I on the right track trying to get him logged on as Administrator? Does anybody have any hints on how he might do that. He says there is no option to logon as new user in the Start/Shutdown menu.

It seems that the administrator account is disabled by default in Vista. To enable it, you have to go into the Computer Management utility. (It's not clear why you can do that if you're not administrator, but apparently you can.) Here's a link which seems to explain it:

http://elssblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/log-on-as-builtin-administrator-in.html

Googling "how to log in as administrator in vista" came up with several other hits that seemed promising if the above one doesn't pan out.

Jack, thanks for the link, as it appeared very promising, but for some reason my customer can't seem to get logged in as Administrator, no matter what approach I outline for him. I've given up, ZTERM times out tomorrow and I need to do something, so I'll try ATE.