Software - Troubleshooting

Q: I run Nautilus on Vista. The software fails to connect to database sometime, or looses connection when I enter data.

A: You are using McAffee that came with your Vista computer. Remove McAffee and install something better like Zone Labs, AVG, NOD32, or "Avast!"... Norton, McAffee and Panda will mess with the database and make things run slow, choppy or not at all.

Q: I ran Nautilus for a long time, all was good, then I got this registry optimizer, ran it, the next time I started the machine Nautilus cannot connect to the database.

A: Bad news: Have to reinstall everything, including database. See Software reinstall article. And next time please be careful what registry utilities you run. Not all that shies is gold - you may end up loosing your computer altogether with those so called optimizers.

Q: I ran update and the program stopped working. What do I do?

A: First of all it not recommended to run installer of a new version over an existing installation. The installer is not capable of updating your database and that leads to problems. You should run update from the software itself by clicking Update Software button under Tools & Preferences.

In some rare cases the update may fail even if you run the update via Update Software button. This happens due to interrupted Internet connection. The updater is programmed to handle interruptions, but sometime there is an error condition that it can not deal with.

Once in a blue moon the worst case scenario happens when you ran update and everything died. There is always a backup of your last running version. To restore it manually you can follow these steps:

1. In that case restart your computer

2. Browse to C:\Nautilus\ folder from "My Computer"

3. Enable extensions of known files:

4. Click Tools / Folder options in the file browser window

5. Select View tab (second from the left)

6. Un-check "Hide extensions of know file types"

7. Click "Apply" and then click "OK"

8. Click on "View" in the file browser and select Details

9. Right click on Nautilus.jar and choose "Rename"

10. Rename the file to Nautilus.old

11. Right click on Nautilus.jar.backup and rename it to Nautilus.jar

12. Start the program as usual and run update again over stable connection.

Q: All the letters on the labels in the software are overlapping. How do I fix that?

A: In some rare cases you will see labels and letters overlap on Trip Sheet and Stats screen.

This happens when machine is setup to run 120 DPI, which makes letter bigger. This messes up print outs and look of the software.

The software is written to default 96 DPI screen mode. To switch the screen back to standard DPI do the following:

Vista

1. Right click in to desktop

2. Choose Personalize

3. Choose Display Settings

4. Click Advanced

5. Under "General" tab there is DPI setting. (If I remember correctly)

6. The higher the DPI the larger the letters. The software is written to

7. standard 96 DPI. If your setting is set to 120 DPI then it will overlap.

8. Hunt around there for DPI setting. Make sure it is set to default 96 DPI.

Windows XP

1. Right click in to desktop

2. Choose Properties

3. Choose Settings

4. Advanced

5. General tab

6. Change the DPI to 96 (normal)

7. Apply the settings.

Database errors.

Q: Nautilus shows me a message telling me that it can not connect to the database. What is wrong?

A: This can only happen for several reasons.

1) The most common one is the database server (PostgreSQL 8.2) was accidentally un-installed from the system. If you did that you would have to reinstall from scratch, but you still have your data saved in C:\Nautilus\rdbms\data. Follow the re-installation instructions

2) In rare cases some not so lofty protection software may block port 5432 and Nautilus now can not talk to the local database. In other cases the protection software see local traffic as remote traffic and blocks Nautilus. To solve this problem open your protection software settings and allow Nautilus to connect.

3) In Extremely rare cases (1 out of 500) You or a software program on your behalf deleted a limited access user named "postgres" from your machine. If that is the case your database can not run and therefore Nautilus can not run either. Recreating that user will not help you. Please see "reinstalling from scratch" section under support

Q: I get error message about old SSL libraries on my machine and the database installer will not go any further. What should I do?

A: The installer message also tells you what those files are. You can find and rename them, then re-run the installer. The Database installer will put newer SSL libraries and your other programs that depend on them will run just fine.

Q: Database Installer complains about starting services.

A: A rare case indeed. Make sure you have Secondary Login service enabled on your computer and running. Without this service the database will not run.