StarFinder User's Guide: Installation
StarFinder User's Guide: InstallationCurrently the StarFinder home page is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.geocities.com/freestarfinder/. It contains a link to download the most recent version of the program. It also contains the most recent User's Guide that you can browse on-line or download.
GeoCities does not allow executable files, such as self-extracting compressed archives, on the free web sites hosted there. Consequently, StarFinder is distributed as a .zip file. This requires separate extraction software such as WinZip, Expander, etc. The StarFinder home page contains links to some free extraction programs if you don't already have one.
Download the compressed archive (.zip) file from the StarFinder home page. Extract the contents of this file into a folder (directory) of your choice. Note that it does not create a new folder (directory), so you will probably want to create a new folder to hold all the extracted files. The only file that you must extract is the one named StarFinder.exe. This program requires no additional installation. Simply run the StarFinder.exe application.
If you don't know how to create a new folder, you can get instructions from the Windows Help utility. Click on the Windows Start button, and then click on the Help item in the menu. Click on the Index tab. In the top text input box, type in creating, folders and press the Enter key.
Once extracted from the .zip file, StarFinder requires no further installation. Simply run the StarFinder.exe application. Note that Windows may list it as StarFinder instead. The StarFinder icon is a dark blue circle with the Big Dipper, similar to the picture at the top of this page. If you can find that icon, you've got the right file.
If you aren't sure how to execute StarFinder.exe, you can get instructions from the Windows Help utility to put a shortcut on your desktop. Follow the instructions above for getting instructions on creating a new folder, except type in creating, shortcuts and display the "Using drag and drop instead of menus" instructions. After you create the shortcut you can run the program by double-clicking on the shortcut.
To remove StarFinder simply delete the files that were extracted from the .zip file (StarFinder.exe and README.txt). You may also want to remove a file by the name of Settings.dat that StarFinder uses to store your settings information (e.g., latitude). If you created a folder to hold the files extracted from the .zip file, all 3 files should be in that folder; simply delete this folder.
If you created a shortcut on your desktop you should delete that file also.
Copyright (c) 2001 by G. L. Deitrick.
Permission to use is granted provided appropriate acknowledgement is given.