[tex-live] (Installation Problem)

[Philip TAYLOR]

Steve, I think your current installation is in
a bit of a mess :-)  As I'm just an end-user of
TeX Live, I have taken the liberty of cc'ing
the TeX Live list with this reply, because to
be honest you will get far better help from the
TeX Live team that I am able to give.  But let
me make some suggestions, and the team can leap
in if they think I am leading you astray :

1) Find out if there really is a TeX Live installation
    under C:\Program; in other words, using either
    Explorer or the CMD prompt (whichever you feel more
    comfortable with) look directly under C:\Program
    and report back here what you see.

2) Look to see if TeX Live has integrated itself
    into your system in any way; in other words,
    use SET from the CMD prompt to get a list of
    all of your environment variables and their
    values, and report them back here.

3) Get yourself a genuine TeX Live 2008 CD.  I seem to recall
    that you originally installed from

	http://ctan.releasenotes.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/2008/

    which is not (as far as I know) associated with
    the official TeX Live 2008 release in any way.

4) Think very carefully : have you installed anything
    since trying to install TeX Live 2008 for the first
    time ?  If you have not, you may be able to use
    a system restore point to get your system back to
    how it was before you first tried to install TeX Live.

5) Let us know where you are located; there may be
    a TeX expert nearby about whom you currently do not know.

6) Consider throwing Vista in your waste bin and get a
    copy of Windows/XP Professional (SP3) instead.  Vista
    is going to cause you nothing but grief :-(((

7) Note that none of the above involve you in doing anything
    potentially dangerous /at this stage/; just carry out the
    tests (and the memory exercise) and report back here
    before you do anything that is likely to endanger your system.

Philip TAYLOR