Opus 8 malfunction

I have dwonloaded the 30 days trial version. It is a fine program and I have decided to purchase it. However, there are problems that I will have to resolved befor buyign it.
I am using WXP Pro on an up to date Sony computer. Within the 30 days trial period, the program refused to open. Reinstallation would work, but after a some hours od days itt would not open again. Erasing and re-installation to a secondary (or connected, external) HD gives the same results. It simply does not work. Obviously, some malfuction occured in the registry etc.
Question:
How can I remove all traces of the installation, in oredr tah I can downoad a new version, install and run and after 30 days, purchase the preogram.
Thanks
PVM

Are you using Zone Alarm or any other invasive "personal firewall" that might kill applications it doesn't like the look of?

Have you recently installed Nero 7 (it removes the COM IStream class from the registry if you install one of the video components, though I believe this is fixed in more recent installers)?

You're definitely within the evaluation limit? Running a version of the program downloaded from www.GPSoft.com.au and not any other source?

If none of those things are the cause you should contact GPSoftware for support as the problem will require some kind of debugging.

gpsoft.com.au/Support.html

Have a look with regedit at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\GPSoftware\Directory Opus\StartupProgress and tell us what the value is?

Thank you for your suggestions.

Zona alarm is installed and there are three entries in program control for Opus 8. All have a question mark, but so far Opus 8 did not request access to the internet via this program

Nero 7 is not installed

Yes, the problem occured within the evaluation limit.

Registry value is: 52

Thanks

PVM

http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2006/11/why_do_firewall.html

Zone Alarm is stupid and, depending on configuration, may kill Opus (without telling you anything at all!) if it does other "suspicious" activity; not just connecting to the internet but things like launching other programs.

Try telling ZA to give maximum trust to Opus.

Also, make sure the ZA definitions are up-to-date since ZA identifies programs by their checksums and if a different/newer version of Opus is installed ZA may think it's an unknown, untrusted program until the definitions are up-to-date.

Opus/Zone Alarm FAQ: [resource.dopus.com/t/zone-alarm-issues/1508/1)

This isn't to say that ZA is definitely the cause of the problem, but it potentially is, and has been known to cause this exact problem, so it's worth ruling out.

My advice is to dump ZA. Even if one hasn't problems with it yet, who knows what's behind the corner.

I myself experienced ZA damaging Usenet communication. Why a firewall would mess with payload data is beyond my comprehension (could it be THAT buggy?).

There are quite a few better free firewalls, not to mention commercial ones.

My current defence set includes Windows Firewall, free Avast antivirus, Limited User accounts, Opera, staying out of trouble and common sense. Works pretty well for a few years already. You can add Windows Defender or some other anty-spyware if you use IE, and online version of some AV for double-checking.

X.

Best system I've come up with yet...

No anti-virus
No anti-spyware
No firewalls

and most important....

No internet

Going on eight years for that system. It's my development backup connected to a LDA (large drive array).

The system makes a backup diff of my internet computer.

On the computer where I let everyone in the family use, that's another story... it's got more anti-things than you can stick a shake at. Somehow, it's the one that ends up with all the viruses and spyware problems.

Go fig.

Me too !
But in my PC, i don't install ZoneAlarm, Nero 7.
And my value at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\GPSoftware\Directory Opus\StartupProgress is 52

What happen with me ?