Most will not have need of the ITW Startup program, but if you are testing a second, local version of Intelliview, or running an iCommand version but still keeping an old Homebase version for access to old jobs, or doing work for multiple clients using different versions of the software, then there is no better way to launch each version than doing so via ITW Startup. In addition to allowing you to select between different installed versions and even select different connections for each version installed, it also boasts a handful of other convenient tools which you may find useful.
At its basic level, the startup tool is used to launch various versions of the software when more than one installation is present. To use it this way, if the standard installation paths were used, one may typically not need to do anything more with setting up the tool. You can select your desired installation and connection, click launch, and the login window will appear. At that point you may proceed normally.
If for any reason you are not seeing your installations, it’s possible that in your case the standard installation paths were not used. In this case we will go to the Options menu and then to “Select install paths”. There are three entries for installation paths, one for ATP and HomeBase, one for iCommand, and One for Intelliview/Steelview. In many cases the latter two can be identical, but of course it does depend on your specific situation.
For ATP/HomeBase, you should select the folder which contains the full installation folder of the program. For example, if the program is installed to and located in C:\Alpine\Homebase or C:\Alpine\AIS, you would select C:\Alpine. Another common installation path is C:\ITWBCG\Homebase, which would require using the path C:\ITWBCG. Once again, however, your situation may be different.
For the next two paths, iCommand and Itelliview/Steelview, it will be similar. As an example, a typical installation path would be C:\Intelliview. The Selected path in this case would be just C:\. As before, this must be catered to your individual setup. In either case, the installation as it then appears in the list will be named according to the name of the folder containing the program. In the above image you can see that the folder name of the HomeBase installation is simply HomeBase, but the iCommand installation is located at C:\Intelliview_22_02_00. With this information, it is possible to control how the programs are listed in the startup program and can help keep them separated.
This is all you will need to know for basic usage of ITW Startup. However, as you may notice there are other tools and options available. Continuing in the Options menu, there are also options you may toggle to skip a check for any available updates, skip the login in the event that there is no password set up anyway, to close ITW Startup automatically after the selected program launches, and an option to allow you to simply double click the desired selection rather than needing to click “Launch”. Further, there is an option to “enable hints” which will display a tooltip above the selected installation when you hover over it, displaying what sort of installation it is (steel vs wood, HomeBase vs iCommand). Finally, you can refresh the list of installations, open the installation directory for the selected version, or adjust the color scheme of the startup tool.
Moving to the Tools menu, there first is an option to automatically terminate all Alpine program processes. This may be necessary if the program locks up or features are not working as expected. Terminating all processes will ensure there is nothing running in the background which will prevent the program from starting up again normally. Next is an option to reset the installation registry. It is advised to use this cautiously, since it can result in the loss of some settings (though not data!), but it can also be useful if certain features of the program are not working correctly. After that we have an option to reset related services automatically. This may be useful for example if you’re having trouble launching and getting an licensing error, or if you have trouble exporting jobs (caused by the Alpine Server Plugin).
There is in this menu also an option to bring up some installation statistics about the programs found in the installation paths selected. And then the remainder of the links are shortcuts to bring up various Windows tools such as the SQL Server configuration manager or even notepad or the onscreen keyboard.
Lastly, in the Help menu, there are links that will lead to the Alpine ITW website where further resources and contact information can be found, and there is also a link to the Sharefile, if you have a download awaiting which has been shared with you. Furthermore, there is a “Site Key” option, which will launch the online site key generator, in case you are set up to receive site keys in that way.
And that is the ITW Startup tool! A useful suite of helpful shortcuts, and an essential tool to assist in launching multiple software versions.
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