What's up with the 1.90 installer?

[Raichu86]

It seems that the 1.90 installer has an alter-ego. While it has always worked fine for me, many people I've told about ZC have had problems running the program (zc190.exe)...

1. The installers asks for a floppy disk labeled "ZC Volume 1" or something to be inserted into the drive.

2. The installer freezes after it says "Simply the best Zelda Clone around!"

Has anybody else had this problem? It seems strange that it would ever behave in that way, especially the first one I listed.

[MottZilla]

It seems to think it's a spanned zip file I guess? Redownloading might help. Also more information about their PCs would.

[Raichu86]

They've tried redownloading.

I know some basic specs for the one where the first problem occurred. It's a 233MHZ I think with 128 MB of memory.

[Eckels]

There have been people, in the past, who have downloaded ZC, repacked it with new (usually money-making) programs, and redistributed it. I've found at least three different instances of this with 1.84... I don't know for sure if it's happened with 1.90 as well, but I'm sure it has. I remember a company called "Magenta Rose" or something like that did one of them...

Things that have been included with these pirated installers, include, but are not limited to: Gator software, Spyware, Homepage changers, Comet Cursor software, and a few other things i can't recall right now.

It's conceivable that the people who are having problems with ZC are trying to download one of these messed up copies.

[Jigglysaint]

Perhaps we should only have one official download site?

[Raichu86]

Quite true, Eckels, but I told both of these people to get their copy from http://www.zeldaclassic.com/download.shtml .

Originally posted by Jigglysaint
Perhaps we should only have one official download site?

That's what I've thought might be the problem. I downloaded my copy from the first mirror... maybe the files on the other mirrors are corrupt or tampered with?

[Eckels]

The tampered installers that I was talking about, I found on Morpheus, Kazaa, and the P2P type programs, as well as a few on really obscure sites...

I've not seen anything like what i was referring to, happen to our mirrors.

[Cyclone]

Here's what we need. We need to put notes in the installer, in the Readme, etc. Basically, we have to tell then that the only place to get the official program is from the official Web site(s). I would suggest two possible places to put it, one of them being the official site; besides these two places - and perhaps cNet - it should not be appearing anywhere.

Something in the program itself is not goods enough; while the repackers can't touch them, they can still put whatever software they want into the installer.

Could there possibly be some sort of key file hidden in the zip for the new version that, if not present, will close the installer with a note about the official site? I dunno how these packing things work that well...

Cyclone