Pack And Go - how to restore?

[RobiWan]

Hi,

Imatch comes with Backup/Restore Utility. Backup works but restore not completely for me.

Imatch install set of files on C:\ProgramData\photools.com. Here has "normal" User no write permissions. How do you resolve this problem if its necessary to restore Database and all settings?

[Mario]

Imatch comes with Backup/Restore Utility. Backup works but restore not completely for me.

No.
Pack & Go has been designed to allow users to transfer their database easily between computers. It is not a backup utility.
After I have learned how many users never backup their system at all, I've added the automatic prompt to IMatch. A Pack & Go backup is better than nothing, after all.

See also the corresponding and very detailed comments about backup in the Pack & Go help file. And the Backup topic in the IMatch help file.


The folder C:\ProgramData\ (%PROGRAMDATA%) is the standard folder for applications to store application-specific data for all users.  All users should have read/write to that folder.
The folder C:\Users\Mario\AppData\Roaming\photools.com (%APPDATA%) is the folder for per-user data. Again, all users should have write access to that folder.

These are Windows defaults.
Neither Pack & Go nor IMatch uses hard-coded folders. They ask Windows for these folders.

If you cannot write to these folders, something is messed up with the file system privileges on your system. Please fix in Windows Explorer. Maybe also check your virus checker if it is blocking access to these standard folders.

[RobiWan]

The folder C:\ProgramData\ (%PROGRAMDATA%) is the standard folder for applications to store application-specific data for all users.  All users should have read/write to that folder.

This is correct. I can create and delete a new folder under c:\programdata but all or some files (I have not tested yet) are with read/ run permissions for users. Only SYSTEM and Admins have permissions to change this files 8example files under C:\ProgramData\photools.com\imatch6\annotations

[Mario]

The IMatch installer instructs Windows installer to create these folders with read/write/modify for authorized users. If this did not work on your system for whatever reason you can easily change this. Just give all authenticated users read/write/modify access to  C:\ProgramData\photools.com\imatch6\ and all sub-folders.

[RobiWan]

to create these folders

Mario - not folders -> files are that problem. I have more than one system here and on all is the same behavior.

[Mario]

The folder privileges normally automatically propagate to the files. Unless you create new files while working under an Admin account - in that case the new files will be Admin only.

[RobiWan]

See here

[Mario]

Die you modify the file system permissions as I explained? Don't forget to set the "Replace all child object permisisons" or else the files with the wrong permissions will not be reset.
Do you restore on the same computer or on another computer? If this is another computer, this may explain a lot.

[Aubrey]

See here

I recently had this issue. It was easily resolved by adding a user folder to
C:\Users

On my laptop my user name was "AOCAN"

On my desktop I have user name "IFS"

I was wanting to move IMatch from laptop to desktop.

I added a folder using administrator privileges to c:\users
The folder name being ""AOCAN"

There is no need to go through the process of setting up a full user account.
I think that Mario explained this previously in a forum post.

Aubrey.

[Mario]

Pack and go will restore to the same folder structure as contained in the pack file. This includes the name of the user folder. If you not only use IMatch on multiple computers but also with multiple user names, you cannot use Pack & Go to restore user-specific settings in %APPDATA% (C:\Users\YOUR-USER-NAME\AppData\Roaming\photools.com\IMatch6).

Pack & Go has no feature to restore the user folder to another user folder on the target computer. This is not how Pack & Go is intended to be used. I could probably add this, but there was never a request.

But this is not the related to the OP problem. Windows installer did not set the access rights for all users to certain folders (many reasons for this) and hence he has to fix the file system permissions manually once. Takes all but a minute in Windows Explorer.