Uninstalling and Installing DNS in another (or new) computer
Submitted by crivon1 on Sat, 03/08/2008 - 12:11.
Following Chuck's treatise, a thought occurred to me.
Having a straight (non-image) back up all of all my drives on an external drive, I would copy each drive (including application data in Documents and Settings) to the other computer having the same drive letters, and this of course would include DNS (which I have on my J drive).
I would then uninstall DNS from my original computer, and reinstall in the other computer.
My question therefore is on reinstalling DNS in the other computer using the installation disc, will it successfully install and retain the voice files and personalised settings that would have transferred from the back up, and would the activation process be affected?
Quentin
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Painlessly Moving DNS and Your User Profile
When you uninstall NaturallySpeaking from your original
computer, make sure it's connected to the Internet so that you can hopefully
gain back an activation because NaturallySpeaking is limited to no more than
10 activations.
Retaining all of your user file information by copying your
drives in the manner you outlined should work. The 1st time you launch
NaturallySpeaking it will prompt you to activate but since you have
“hopefully” acquired an activation credit, you should break even.
NaturallySpeaking should also automatically recognize your user profile
(assuming they are in the default folder). If your user files are not in the
default folder, you can simply browse to your alternative location. The 1st
time you launch your user file NaturallySpeaking will respond with a message
saying that the user file is not yet ready for dictation. If you follow the
prompts you should only have to run the Audio Setup Wizard and 30 seconds
later you should be ready to go.
Lunis Orcutt - Developer of KnowBrainer &
Host
of the Http://www.KnowBrainer.com Speech Recognition Forum
crivon1 wrote: Following
Following Chuck's treatise, a thought occurred to me.
Having a straight (non-image) back up all of all my drives on an external drive, I would copy each drive (including application data in Documents and Settings) to the other computer having the same drive letters, and this of course would include DNS (which I have on my J drive).
I would then uninstall DNS from my original computer, and reinstall in the other computer.
My question therefore is on reinstalling DNS in the other computer using the installation disc, will it successfully install and retain the voice files and personalised settings that would have transferred from the back up, and would the activation process be affected?
Quentin
Quentin,
The answer to your question is that it depends on a couple of factors.
First, your copy of DNS in your backup contains a flag (CLSID – Windows system registry), which you will never find because it is a binary encoded entry and contains no readable text information that would assist you in identifying it anyway. That entry indicates that your copy of DNS has been activated. What effect this has on the procedure that you have outlined is unclear because I've never tried this. However, consider the following:
1. My guess is that you should be OK if you are sure to uninstall DNS from the first system and reclaim the activation before you boot up the second system. If you boot up the second system before you uninstall it in the first system, you will get the security dialog and you may not be able to make that go away even after you uninstall. Therefore, be sure to uninstall DNS fully from the first system before you even boot up the second one.
2. If this doesn't work, and in addition to letting us know, then it is very likely that that particular registry key to which I refer above is the source of the problem. If this is the case, then your only option is to do the following:
First, move your users on the second system to a safe location. Unfortunately, you will have to do this manually because the security dialog will not permit you to open Dragon and do it using the export function.
You cannot uninstall DNS normally on the second system under this condition using the Windows Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs because the security dialog will not permit you to uninstall it. Therefore, your only option is to run the DNS95remove.exe utility. Reboot your system, then reinstall DNS. It should prompt you for a normal activation under this condition.
Chuck Runquist
Former Dragon NaturallySpeaking SDK & Senior Technical Solutions PM for DNS
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee - that will do them in. - Bradley's Bromide