Problems installing TeX

[Peter Flynn]

On 11/04/2020 16:01, Michael Barr, Prof. wrote:
> The problem I described yesterday of not having pdflatex.fmt got only
> one response from Vu Van Dung.  

I'm sorry you're having trouble. I'm not a Windows user but from what 
you described it suggests that the installation only installed some of 
the files, not all of them.

> That was the suggestion that I start over with TL20 which had just
> been released.  So I did and the installation instructions said to
> remove the old version, which I did. I then downloaded
> install-tl-windows.exe and ran it.  During the unpacking an error
> message came up saying it failed.
Do you have a copy (maybe a screenshot) of what it said (exactly)?

> I tried it twice more with the same result.
Usually, when things go wrong once, they are at least consistent and go 
wrong identically every time. It sounds perverse, but replicatability is 
important for being able to find the problem

> Any idea what is going wrong?

I'm afraid not, but that's because I don't use or understand Windows.

> Should I wait a few days and try again, hoping the problem with be
> resolved? 

I don't think TL is updated at that kind of speed.

> Should I try to remove the previously unpacked things and where do I
> find them?

On 11/04/2020 16:12, Philip Taylor wrote:
[...]
> If you have adequate bandwidth, Michael, may I suggest downoading
> the TeX Collection ISO <http://tug.org/~manfred/texcol2020.iso>,
> announced here a few days ago, and then either burning it to a DVD or
> mounting it in whatever way your version of Windows (and possible
> add-ons) will allow.
This is a very good suggestion. The 2019 version would also do.

Please keep us updated. I have documentation on installing TeX from the 
DVD but only for the ProTeXt application, not TeXLive, so I am 
interested to know more about installing TL under Windows.


Peter