I tried to use OO Portable on a 256MB USB flash memory stick, but it will not start: I only see the start logo and then nothing happens.
For the sake of testing, I copied the entire PortableOpenOffice directory to my hard disk and the application starts from the hard disk with no problem whatsoever.
I copied the settings patch to the PortableOpenOffice directory, but again OO doesn't start.
I checked the bootstrap.ini file and the user installation path is UserInstallation=file:///F:/PortableOpenOffice/settings
Drive F is the correct USB drive on my PC running Windows.
The free space on the USB flash memory stick after installing the program is 78MB.
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Did you give it enough time? It's the slowest app. Is it running in the task manager?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
No, it doesn't appear in task manager when I start it from the USB drive. It's very frustrating, especially considering that I can run it from my hard disk.
I tried running OO portable on another PC's USB drive and it didn't start there either.
I also copied all files to another flash memory stick (1GB) and again it doesn't start on my PC.
Could the problem be with Java? I don't use 1.4.x, but JRE 5.0.
Anyway, since Portable OO.o runs if I install it on my hard disk, I can only assume that there is something wrong with my USB configuration. I cannot however imagine what that may be.
If multiple USB devices fail on your PC, there could be a conflict of some sort. Not sure of an easy way to diagnose it, though. The portable apps don't care what kind of device they run from... as long as the PC can reliably communicate with it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
As far as I can tell the USB ports (I have eight USB ports) work properly. Windows does not report any problems with them and I can use those drives (i.e. ports) normally for file copy/delete, and file open/save with MS Office and such activities.
I am now going to copy the Portable OO.o programs to the 1GB memory stick in another desperate attempt to see if it will work. However, I'm not at all optimistic about the result.
After installing it to the 1GB memory stick from the more recent download, it works. Could it be that the first time that I downloaded it there was a problem with it?
I'm going to install it on the 256MB memory stick with the more recent download and see if it will work on it too.
That's why I include the MD5 hashes so you can verify you have a good copy regardless of where you download it from. Usually, a corrupt version can't be unzipped, though, so you know right away.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
It remains a mystery: I checked the MD5 hashes of the two downloads, did a file compare and I found that the zip files are exactly the same. Besides, as you rightly point out, if there was a corruption the zip file probably wouldn't open.
Anyway, it's good news for me that ultimately the program starts, and now I have it installed on both memory sticks.
Thank you for your interest in helping me out and of course in providing this excellent set of programs to us.