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Any Hazards When Installing V3 and V4 in Parallel?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg19146] Any Hazards When Installing V3 and V4 in Parallel?
  • From: hanssen at zeiss.de
  • Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 23:58:48 -0400
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Hi, MathGroup,

reviewing this newsgroup I noticed, that there may be problems when
installing Mathematica 3.x and Mathematica 4 in parallel on one WinNT Sp3 - computer.

Since there are also reportson rare cases, where Mathematica 3.x-notebooks 
don't run on Mathematica 4 exactly as before, I need a way to easily "switch 
back" for some transitional period of time.

Is there a way to install Mathematica 4 in parallel to an existing Mathematica 3.0?
Which boundary conditions have to be met, when doing this?

Mathematica produces Registry entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/
SOFTWARE/Wolfram Research/Mathematica. Looking into it,
I see a subdirectory "3.0". If Mathematica 4-installation is done right,
I expect a seperate entry "4.0" after upgrading. However, there
are other registry entriesHKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/.nb/MathematicaNB/
ShellNew, which is not related to a version. The same holds for
similarly structured entries MathematicaM, MathematicaNB and 
MathematicaTR, all under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. The same
holds for Mathematica-related entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/
SOFTWARE/Classses. I have found some more registry entries
in other places. Therefore my question: Does one have to expect 
problems with the registry for a parallel installation of both versions?

Do Mathematica 3.x and Mathematica 4 install any files in WinNT/System or
WinNT/System32, whose names are the same, but the content
different? Any problems to expect in this area?

If there are any problems of Mathematica 3.x and Mathematica 4 installed on the 
same computer which can not be overcome by using proper
options when installing: 
     Would it be sufficient, to move the Mathematica 3.x-directory under 
Program Files together with all its subdirectories to a CDR before
installing Mathematica 4, in order to copy it back to its old place, when needed?
     Would it be possible, to move the Mathematica 4-directory  under 
Program Files together with all its subdirectories to a CDR, if one 
wants to switch back to Mathematica 3.x, when needed?
     Does anyone have a batch file for switching between versions
in such a way?


kind regards

Dipl.-Math. Adalbert Hanszen


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