RACHEL on Windows

USB RACHEL includes an embedded web server and database that can be used on Windows Computers.

There are a couple of ways RACHEL can be used. The two most common ones are:

• Running directly from the USB drive. This is fast, and an excellent way to test whether RACHEL will work on the particular Windows computer
• Running from the computer’s drive. Initially this takes much longer to setup, particularly on older computers that predate USB 3.0 drives, etc where the files may take many hours to copy from the USB drive. However, once the files are safely copied onto the computer RACHEL can be used on that computer without needing anything else and the USB drive can then be used with/on other computers.

Programs used by RACHEL on Windows

• UwAmp provides the main web server
• MySQL is the database server, used to support the full-text search feature in RACHEL
• tasklist.exe (called by Start RACHEL.bat) which tries to detect whether the web server is already running. NB: This program is not available on Windows XP Home Edition, so we need to find a solution.

If you are running Windows Security software you may be asked whether you want to unblock Apache HTTP Server and then mysqld - if so, select unblock.

TBC Add section(s) on what’s involved in terms of running the software: web server, MySQL, etc.

When RACHEL fails to start

RACHEL is generally reliable on Windows computers. However there may be some configuration issues to resolve in order to get RACHEL running, or there may be problems that need fixing.

Troubleshooting tips

First things first - please pay attention and note down the errors and warnings. That way you’ll be able to ask for help and provide these details to whoever you ask. They’re more likely to be able to help you diagnose the problems to help you get the software working again.

Problems copying files (and how to check)

RACHEL USB currently consists of roughly 250,000 files. Sometimes the copy can fail to copy all the files, or some files may be advertently moved or deleted.

• Right-click on folders in Windows Explorer and check the Properties of the folder. Allow Windows time to calculate the results which can take several minutes for the entire RACHEL package or any folder that includes the main contents at bin\www e.g. RACHEL or RACHEL\bin both contain the www folder in their results.
• Run dir /s command in a command window

Compare and contrast the number of files and folders between several computers with RACHEL installed, or compare with the files on the source USB drive. There may be some differences in the overall sizes depending on the filesystem used.

xcopy can be run from the command line to selectively copy missing files. The key parameters are:

• /s to include sub-folders (also known as sub-directories)
• /d to tell xcopy to only copy files that are newer (which also copies missing files across since they’re treated as newer).

Sample command line. Run from the equivalent location on the local computer e.g. C:\Users\julian\: xcopy E:\*.* . /s/d This assumes we’ve already created a rachel… folder locally in my default folder. There are too many differences in Windows versions for me to easily document all the variations (sorry).

Configuring antivirus software

Some antivirus software blocks the programs used by RACHEL for Windows as a security precaution. You need to configure the antivirus software so that it doesn’t block these programs. How to configure the various programs differs for each program. Some have a concept of exceptions, or exclusions, where you can tell the antivirus software to effectively ignore or trust programs in a particular folder.

RACHEL\bin is where the various programs are located that RACHEL needs to run. Within that folder, and nested several folders deep are the MySQL program files which also need to run. They are in RACHEL\bin\bin\database\mysql-5.6.20\bin (at least in the release of RACHEL when this section was written). The folder name may change in future if and when we update the version of MySQL that’s used by RACHEL.

Avast antivirus

How to configure permanent exclusions http://classroom.synonym.com/make-exclusions-avast-16518.html

TBC Add additional antivirus programs

Windows Task Manager

Microsoft provides a powerful small program called Task Manager that provides information about the running programs, processes, and what’s being used currently (including memory and network). It can also be used to kill (stop) running programs. We may need to use this to kill the web server or MySQL if they’ve not started properly (they’re designed to keep running).

Task Manager can be started in various ways. Here are several of these ways:

• Press the combination of these 3 keys together at the same time: Ctrl+Alt+Esc
• Right-click on the Windows Bar on the desktop screen (where the Start button is on the bottom left, typically) and select Start Task Manager
• Press the combination of Ctrl+Alt+Del (to lock, or reboot the computer) and select Task Manager from the dialog box that’s displayed

Security Settings and Web Browsers

• Internet Explorer’s Security Zones. Intranet security for RACHEL on localhost.

Choice of Web Browser

The ultimate choice depends on various factors, however, particularly for Windows XP then either Google Chrome or Firefox are good options if they are available to install.

• Google Chrome is available online from https://google.com/chrome
• Firefox

http://lifehacker.com/download-full-firefox-and-chrome-installers-for-offline-1570335126 explains how to download full versions of Chrome and Firefox so we can install them offline.

User and Administrator roles

• Different roles help improve the security and reliability of computers by limiting who can run which programs when using User accounts. The Administrator role has full power and access to everything, however this means that anyone running as an Administrator could easily make a mess of the computer, and it’s easier for viruses to worm themselves into the operating system.
• User accounts seldom have access to change security settings of antivirus software, etc. So some of these changes need to be done using an Administrator’s account.

The default Administrator account is called ‘Administrator’. This is not listed by default in the login options. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination twice at the login prompt can let you login using this account provided you know the password, of course.

Resetting the Administrator’s password (or other passwords).

There are various ways to reset passwords. Here are suggestions. For now, please search for details online.

• Boot CD-ROMs with a password reset utility
• Administrators can set the password for user accounts
• Accounts can update their own password

Optimising performance

Many of the computers where we want to run RACHEL are relatively old, overworked and underpowered compared to what we might like. The performance of RACHEL may be particularly poor (slow) when the computer doesn’t have enough RAM memory for the set of running programs. For instance, on a small netbook from 2009 the computer has 1GB of RAM however the RAM needed is over 1.5GB to run RACHEL and Google Chrome (without any other applications).

Windows includes utilities to tune the performance. Microsoft provides various additional utilities to download, including: PowerToys can help tweak the UI, and SysInternals utilities enable much greater control and understanding of what your operating system is doing. Microsoft provide training online for SysInternals at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb469930 - well worth watching when it’s practical to do so.