I am glad that guys with more computer saavy are picking up the mediacat ball, I still am in the stone ages computerwise.
It was my intent to get this knowledge into the hands of the members here, but Stihl and their lawyers will get to work to shut
these online sources down, which is why I tried the chain letter, it diffused the trail of liability......
so download your stuff quick!!
I still am trying to figure out these new links, do I need to download programs to read and unzip?
Hey Fish,
Us "computer wise" types are sometimes a bit to clever for our own good!
I'll try and explain what you download and how to get it installed in laymen terms.
Getting the file
The link provided in the first post points to a cyber locker called fileserve.com
You don't need to pay any money to download the files but as they're a business they'll try and make it seem that way!
Towards the lower middle of the page that loads you'll find a green button that says
Slower Download. This is the one we're interested in. Click it
Now it will ask you to
Enter the code shown above this is not always easy, as the code is generally gibberish. Don't worry if you get it wrong you can try again. Once you've typed it in click the
Slower Download button again.
Now you'll see
Please wait XX seconds slowly counting down.
Once this gets to zero the green
Slower Download button will appear once again. Click it. Save the file somewhere you can get to it easily later.
Working with zip files
The file you download is a zip file, this is basically a wrapper, generally for multiple files.
As MediaCat only works on a windows PC i assume your using Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
All of these operating systems know how to deal with .zip files.
Find the zip file and right click it.
In the menu that appears there should be an option to
Extract All... (or something similar) select this.
Now follow the prompts to extract the contents of the zip file
Image files
You should now be able to see the two files that were extracted, an
.iso file and a
readme.txt file.
The readme file contains some basic information on how to install (we'll cover it deeper here thou)
The .iso is an image of a disc like a CD or a DVD (a copy of the digital data from a physical disc)
Now we can go down one of two routes here. We can "burn" the image to a blank CD-R using the CD writer that most computers now have as standard or we can "mount" the image (pretend like its and extra CD drive on the computer)
Burn the image to a disc
As most computers come with a CD writer they also generally come with software for writing discs. I suggest you double click the .iso file and see what (if any) program jumps in to try and deal with it.
If a program loads then there's not a lot between you and a copy of the Stihl catalogue on disc. You cant do much wrong! Just look for the
Burn or
Write CD button
If no program is found to deal with .iso files then i'd suggest checking you actually have a CD writer drive in your machine, normally depicted by the letters CD-R or CD-RW written on the actual CD drive
If you have then head over to
Free ISO Burner for a piece of software to help you out. There's step by step guides here on how to burn your first image.
Mounting the image
This is not really for beginners so i'm not going to cover it here. Doing a Google search
iso mounter free - Google Search should get you looking in the right place.
Installing the catalogue
This is the easy bit. Put the disk in the drive and follow the on-screen prompts. You can install the full catalogue or just the application if you wish (this means you have to have the cd in the drive to access the catalogue data)
All of the Expiry checks have been fudged so that the catalogue will work well into 2050
Adobe Reader
Remember you'll also need Adobe Reader (if you've not already got it installed). You can get it from
http://get.adobe.com/br/reader/
Tidying up
Once you've burnt your catalogue to a disk you may want to delete the zip, iso and readme.txt file as they do take up quite a bit of space on your hard drive. If You loose CD's as often as i do (i don't loose them i just don't label them!) i recommend you keep the .iso file somewhere for later use or better than than make another copy and share with a mate who's not as computer literate :msp_blushing:
If anyone gets stuck just drop me a PM
**** Please note there's actually a later version of the software over at http://www.arboristsite.com/chainsaw/177018.htm ****
mh :msp_thumbsup: