Problem Installing MultiPing or PingPlotter

Question

I'm having problems installing one of your products. What's the solution?

Solution

All MultiPing and PingPlotter editions use Windows Installer and the "MSI" format to reliably install the software. Windows Installer is a shared system component and can sometimes fail in unexpected ways.

There are a few "easy" things you can do to try and get the installer to work.

Restart your computer.
Make sure you have the latest version. If you didn't download from our web site, please make sure you download it directly from us at http://www.pingman.com
Download and save the install to your local hard drive's Download directory, rather than launching from the temporary directory for your web browser.
Look in Add/Remove programs and see if the software is already installed. If it is, please uninstall it and then try installing again. This can sometimes be a problem if you have an older or newer version already installed.
If you've had a older version installed - reinstall that specific version (you can download older version of PingPlotter or MultiPing from your account page). After the old version of program has been installed, run the installer once again, and select the "Repair" option. Once the repair is complete, uninstall the program, and try installing the newer version once again.
Try disabling your virus scanner after you've downloaded. You can explicitly scan before and after doing the install, but we've had spotty reports over the years of changes in a virus scanner (usually short-lived) that causes install problems. The realtime scanner is the culprit here.

Creating an install log

If none of those steps help, we probably need to create a log file that helps us troubleshoot, and then send it to our support team at support@pingman.com. To create that log, do the following (the explicit instructions here assume you're using Windows 8 - you may need to modify the instructions a bit if you're running some other operating system).

To create an install log, we need to run the installer with a custom command line parameter. This parameter is: /log "path to file". Here are explicit instructions on how to do that:

Open a command prompt (in Start, Search box, enter "cmd" no quote, then click the icon when it appears).
Drag the installer into the command prompt and drop it there. Some text will automatically be entered with a full path.
Add this text to the end of the prompt: /debug /log=%AppData%\Debug_Install.log. The full command line should look something like this:

C:\Users\(your name)\Downloads\pingplotter_install.exe /debug /log=%AppData%\Debug_Install.log

Hit enter, then let the installer run, and when it's done (and has gotten the error), confirm all messages to close the installer.
Still from the command prompt, enter "start %AppData%" and hit enter. You should get a folder opening with your AppData path, and in that will be a file called "Debug_Install.log". Send an email to support@pingman.com describing your issue and attach that file.
Once you've sent the email, delete the debug_install.log and close all the windows we just opened. When we get your email, we'll get back to you with feedback on how to solve this.

Issues with "B:\" drive

We've received some reports of users having issues installing if their primary hard drive is a "B:\" drive. We're working with the creator of our installer solution to try and figure out a fix for this issue - but in the meantime, there are a few methods to try and get things working:

Copy the PingPlotter installer to the "C:\" drive - and run it from there (note: you'll usually need to boot from your "C:\" drive for this to work)
Launch the installer from a command line (we cover this in more detail here: http://www.pingplotter.com/manual/undoautolicensekeyentry.html) and manually extract and run the MSI to your "C:\" drive - and then run it from there
Install PingPlotter on a completely different machine, copy the entire contents of the install directory, and place it back on your original machine.

Copying the PingPlotter install directory from another machine isn't a perfect solution (you won't be able to install PingPlotter as a service, and you won't have a .pp2 file association), but it can at least get the program up and running for you.

If you have any questions, or if you need help with any of the above processes - please don't hesitate to contact us at support@pingman.com!

Article ID: 92
Created On: January 14, 2012
Last Updated On: July 1, 2015

Online URL: https://www.pingman.com/kb/article/problem-installing-multiping-or-pingplotter-92.html