How popNote upgrading works - 12/30/06
              by Mike K5HUM
              
The upgrade process starts by clicking the menu choice 
under "Network" saying "Monitor On". By clicking on 
the "Monitor ON" menu item it will change to "Monitor 
OFF" and then ungrey the menu choice under "Help" 
titled "Upgrade" allowing you to click it.  

When you click on the "Upgrade" choice, PopNote begins 
downloading a file from my support web server which 
results in the creation of a file called "popnote.upg" 
which is then copied to the same folder where 
PopNote.exe resides. After the download byte count 
stops, as indicated in the bottom Status bar, the 
download function counts down 7 seconds before 
proceeding to the next step.

At this point, popnote.upg is compared to the existing 
popnote.exe for equality. If they are the same (byte 
for byte) PopNote notifies you that "Your version is 
the most recent!" and the process stops.

If they are not the same, then PopNote calls the 
upgrading utility - upgrade.exe (which must be in the 
same folder with popnote.exe) and after launching 
upgrade.exe PopNote closes itself down.  When 
upgrade.exe runs it then DELETES the existing copy of 
PopNote.exe and then RENAMES popnote.upg to 
popnote.exe.  Finally, upgrade.exe then RUNS the newly 
downloaded (and renamed file - PopNote.exe) and then 
upgrade.exe shuts itself down.

You might consider this process rather odd but its 
necessary do to how Windows locks files from tampering 
once they are running. 

At this point a new version of PopNote should be running.

---------------------------------------------------

NEW UPGRADE UTILITY

Due to a sudden surge in the interest of PopNote and a 
subsequent increase in frequency of upgrading, an old 
problem is being reported again wherein two upgrade 
trys are occasionally required to complete a successful 
upgrade.  If this applies to you, continue reading.

I wrote a new UPGRADE.EXE utility trying to address 
this problem.  It can be downloaded here:

http://arc.tzo.com/ham/upgrade.zip

After you download the ZIP file, unzip it and move 
upgrade.exe into the same folder where popnote.exe 
exist. You may wish to backup or rename the original 
upgrade.exe first, otherwise just overwrite it. 
Hopefully this new upgrade utility will fix the
the double upgrade problem.

For those interested in HOW the upgrade utility
works, you can read all about it here:

http://arc.tzo.com/ham/pn_tech_up.txt

---------------------------------------------------

WHAT COULD GO WRONG:

If you do not have full Administrator rights on your 
computer, the operating system will not allow the 
upgrade installation process.
FIX: Give yourself full Admin rights to the entire PC

If your firewall blocks PopNote from communicating on 
Port 80, the default HTTP port, the upgrade will fail.
FIX: Set your router to pass TCP port 80 in both 
directions.

If you are running any anti spyware, popup blockers or
active virus scanners that are poorly written.
FIX: Disable them during an upgrade.

If the utility (upgrade.exe) does not exist in the
same folder as the program (popnote.exe) the upgrade
will fail.
FIX: Move upgrade.exe into the same folder as popnote.exe

Poor network path conditions that cause packet 
transmission delays in excess of 7 seconds.
FIX: try again later.

73
Mike - K5HUM