alarmdecoder.com

Hello,
I was hoping to use an old laptop running Windows 2000 Professional for my AD2USB computer, but the AlarmDecoder Keypad App program is giving an error during installation. Is this software supposed to be compatible with Windows 2000? If not, I can wipe this old computer and install Linux instead. Is there a recommended version/distribution of Linux that would work well on this circa 1999 laptop? It will only be used for interfacing the AD2USB device.

By the way, the error it gives is "An internal error occurred (error code: 20)."

Thanks,

Dominic

Its possible it wont work unless we can make sure your w2k system is running .Net 4.

I just uploaded to the downloader page the RAW zip file with just the files no installer. Expand this onto your desktop and following the other download links on that page make sure you have "Windows: Download .NET" and "Windows: Download Gtk#" installed.

Once these are installed just try and run the EXE by double clicking on it. If things dont work I am hoping it will produce an exception log report in that same folder.


I probably have a W2k system around sompleace to test so let me know how this goes.

Re
Sean M

Thank you Sean, I will give your suggestions a try and let you know what happens!

Unfortunately, .Net Framework 4.0 is not compatible with Windows 2000. See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 00%29.aspx - you will need at least Windows XP Home edition for support if you want to use Windows.

Thanks,
Kevin

Thank you Kevin. Looks like I'll be loading Linux instead since Windows 2000 is incompatible. Is there a particular distribution/version that is recommended to work with an old laptop (running a Pentium 3 with about 128 MB RAM)?
Thanks,

Dominic

I think i would recommend Lubuntu, http://lubuntu.net/

It has all the features of Ubuntu, as well as "ease of use" but it is made more "light weight" for older PC's and such. Do note that if your CPU does not have "PAE" or "Physical Address Extensions" please follow their instructions about starting with the 12.04 version, detailed on their website.

Thank you for the recommendation!

Dominic

Thank you again for all your help guys. It turns out that I was not able to install Lubuntu. Although my meager 128 MB of RAM was supposedly enough to run the OS, it was not enough to run the install process (even the alternate install).

So, I ended up throwing an old copy of XP on the laptop and I now have the keypad program working!! Thanks so much for your help!


One more question: This laptop has only a 5 GB hard drive, so after all of the automatic windows updates completed, it only has about 250 MB of free space left on the hard drive. A lot of the space is taken up by older versions of .NET (1.0 through 3.5). I saw in Kevin's earlier post that .NET 4.0 is required. Does the keypad app also use the earlier versions of .NET or can I get rid of those (I understand that they could possibly be required for other programs, but I'm only concerned about the keypad app)?

Thanks,


Dominic

The Keypad App only needs 4 and as long as the removal of the 1.x - 3.x stuff does not break the 4.x stuff you should be just fine. Worst case remove them all and reinstall 4.x fresh.

Re
Sean M

Thanks Sean. I uninstalled all versions except 4.0 and the keypad program still works.

Dominic