DAMBE Installation for Teaching Labs

DAMBE has been installed in a number of computer laboratories for teaching. As such laboratories use many different computer programs, the common practice is to install all programs on one computer, create a disk image, and then boot up all computers in the teaching lab from this disk image. Users have administrative privileges, but their modification to the computer will be lost as soon as they log out (except for their personal files saved to their personal directory). Thus, every time when a user logs in, he gets the same computing environment no matter what nasty things previous users may have done to the computer.

Occasionally, a computer lab may not be set up like this, and users are only given standard user privilege. In that case, when you run DAMBE as a standard user instead of an Administrator, you may encounter error messages such as “Error number 339 component comdlg32.ocx or one of its dependencies is not correctly registered – a file is missing or invalid”). To avoid this, two approaches appear to work (but not always):

1. Method 1: Install DAMBE while logged in as a standard user rather than an administrator. When the installer asks for elevation, use an admin account for that, and the installation will proceed and DAMBE would work properly.
2. Method 2:
1. Check if comdlg32.ocx and comctl32.ocx are in the C:\Windows\System32 directory (for 32-bit Windows) or the C:\Windows\SysWow64 directory (for 64-bit Windows). If not, download comctl32.ocx and comdlg32.ocx to C:\Windows\System32 (32-bit Windows) or C:\Windows\SysWow64 (64-bit Windows). You may need to download to another directory and then copy them to C:\Windows\System32 or C:\Windows\SysWow64 directory. If they are already there, leave them there and DON’T copy over them.
2. Run cmd.exe with Administrative privilege (e.g., right-clicking cmd.exe and click “Run as Administrator”). Once you see the command prompt, change directory to C:\Windows\System32 or C:\Windows\SysWow64, and type at the command line:
regsvr32.exe /u COMDLG32.OCX (This may not be necessary)
regsvr32.exe COMCTL32.OCX
regsvr32.exe COMDLG32.OCX