[solved] Dabbling in WinAVR

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Mike B
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Posted by Mike B: Sat. Jan 24, 2009 - 10:44 PM
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I would like to do more than dabble in WinAVR. I would have used it much earlier except every time I installed it in the past on Win 2000 Pro SP4, it screws up the registry. What I have seen is a pair of duplicate entries for “WinAVR 20070525 (remove only) in “add remove programs” and every time I shutdown I get stuck in a 3 minute + wait dialog for “saving your settings...”.

Yes, I know 20070525 is old, but past misbehavior including at least one older version has made me gun shy about installing WinAVR again. Selecting one of the remove only entires makes that entry go away, but the other one is left behind and cannot self remove. By far the worst is the shutdown delay that never goes away. I multi-boot my systems, so this delay is a real PITA.

As usual I correct registry problems by rebuilding Windows from scratch, however the lack of LBA48 support for the Win 2000 Pro installer makes this a nightmare on large drives. I'm forced to re-partition the drive to be within the LBA48 limits, then restore all the destroyed partitions and data, after enabling LBA48 support in the re-installed Win 2000 Pro.

BTW, all my Windows operating systems have no NIC drivers (on purpose), so there is no chance of any web based connection exploits (other than the actual copy of WinAVR, AVRStudio and WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86.exe downloaded using Linux).

As I have come to know WinAVR its not free at all. In fact if my time is worth anything its very expensive. I would like to give it another shot, maybe....

My question is; have any other Win 2000 Pro SP4 users ever seen this misbehavior and if you have seen it, is it still a problem in the newer WinAVR releases? If you haven't seen this problem, then how could you say if its fixed or not.

Tags:

Tools, Compilers and General Programming
Last Edited: Mon. Mar 23, 2009 - 05:24 AM
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EW
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Posted by EW: Sun. Jan 25, 2009 - 04:03 AM
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Sorry that you have had this problem with WinAVR. I can't say that I have seen this problem, but I don't have that operating system variant.

Eric Weddington
www.linkedin.com/in/ericweddington/

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Sun. Jan 25, 2009 - 11:26 AM
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I used it for a long time on 2K/SP4 and never had a moment's worry despite installing lots of versions each time Eric made a release so I'd suggest there might be something else going on with your machine (an interaction with something else that is installed or even something like a rootkit virus?)

Cliff

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curtvm
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Posted by curtvm: Sun. Jan 25, 2009 - 01:30 PM
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WinAVR install actually doesn't do that much, so I would not be too quick to put any blame on that installation. Avr Studio would be a different story (just a guess).

I just installed WinAVR-20081205, and here is the summary of changes made-

files/folders-
created C:\WinAVR-20081205 and added files

registry-
HKLM\SOFTWARE\WinAVR created with 2 entries
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Free Software Foundation\WinAVR-20081205 created with 3 entries
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall - 2 entries (same stuff, different names, not sure why but is harmless)
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment - 2 entries added to path

(I'm ignoring some stuff, like Start Menu entries)

edit-

YEAH! I got my various versions of WinAVR working with no install of any of them (I just figured out what Studio was looking for to determine if gcc was installed).

1) extract WinAVR ($_OUTDIR) from exe install file using 7zip
2) add c:\WinAVR\bin and c:\WinAVR\utils\bin to system path
3) add 2 registry entries in registry uninstall key (for Studio to know we have gcc installed)
4) a batch file for each version to rename its folder to c:\WinAVR (and put others back to their original names)

(more details if wanted)

I have 20060421/20071221/20081205 working this way. I just click the batch file for the version I want and recompile.

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jonsoons
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Posted by jonsoons: Mon. Jan 26, 2009 - 12:44 AM
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curtvm: Sorry to be so off topic but how do you get those details on what was changed in your Windows system after the install?

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curtvm
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Posted by curtvm: Mon. Jan 26, 2009 - 08:26 AM
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http://www.u3.com/developers/dow...

Its a little 'primitive', but it works. I'm sure there are many other apps which are better.

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Mike B
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Posted by Mike B: Mon. Jan 26, 2009 - 06:35 PM
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clawson wrote:
...(an interaction with something else that is installed or even something like a rootkit virus?)
I doubt there is a problem in the MS factory Windows 2000 Pro SP4 CD with its multiple layered authentication images. I suppose my ASUS mother board chipset drivers could be infected or my ATI Radon video card drivers. I can go back to factory ASUS/ATI CDs for testing (i.e. no downloaded updates). Since I start from a freshly formated windows partition and have installed AVRStudio/WinAVR as the first applications, if there was any rootkit, it would probably be in one of these packages:
aStudio4_14SP1b589.exe			94,170,176 B
WinAVR-20070525-install.exe			18,434,048 B
WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86.exe	2,585,872 B

Does anyone see any problem with the length of the above files (I slightly modified the name of the AVRStudio download)? These files are older ones that were used in the original install. If someone inserted a root kit I would expect the file length to be different. My gut feel is WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86.exe would be the most likely candidate for a root kit infection, because MS wouldn't allow me to get a copy from their web site (I never run Windows on any network and they now block any non-Windows OS from downloading, so I had to go to an outside site for the MS installer that ATMEL saddled me with). I wish ATMEL had never gone .NET for the AVRStudio libraries in the first place (just more pollution and potential problems for an OS that is dying out as far as my needs go). I only have a very few applications left that require any MS Windows OS, and I'm constantly looking/hoping to retire these as well. My secrete hope was the AVRone might give ATMEL an incentive to integrate AVRStudio functionality into AVR32 Studio, resulting in a Linux alternative. It crushed my secret hope when AVRone support was added to AVRStudio :cry:.

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EW
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Posted by EW: Mon. Jan 26, 2009 - 08:46 PM
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The size of WinAVR 20070525 is correct.

Eric Weddington
www.linkedin.com/in/ericweddington/

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Mike B
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Posted by Mike B: Thu. Feb 5, 2009 - 10:59 PM
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Thanks to all who replied. I used a Windoze computer to get a real copy of WinAVR-20070525-install.exe and it matched. For now I'll play with one of the already damaged Win 2k installs. Later I'll do yet another reformat/rebuild.

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Mike B
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Posted by Mike B: Mon. Mar 23, 2009 - 05:29 AM
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Just reinstalled Win2k SP4, WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86, AVRStudio 4.15 with WinAVR-20090313-install and it all worked with no double add/remove program entry and no extended Win2k "saving your settings" hang. Thanks for all the help, I'm good now.

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Bingo600
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Posted by Bingo600: Thu. Mar 26, 2009 - 06:53 AM
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@Mike

Nice that it worked out.

If you need WinAVR on a "Stick" , have a look here (I even think EW can woutch for it)
http://www.chip45.com/index.pl?p...

Btw: There once was something about upgrading a M$ XML parser , if using Studio.
but maybe it's included in SP4.

/Bingo

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curtvm
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Posted by curtvm: Thu. Mar 26, 2009 - 01:48 PM
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If anyone is interested, I have some cmd batch files I use to run avr studio and change versions of WinAVR.

I don't install WinAVR, I just extract the important folder from the exe and have some cmd files to change the 'current' version (anytime- even when running studio) and to run avr studio with the path set to the two bin folders (and some registry entries so studio knows winavr is 'installed'). I can have the cmd and winavr files on my portable flash drive (avr studio still needs to be installed).

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