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Beersmith on my flash drive thingy

Blueblood

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I put beersmith on my flash drive so I can use it at my buddies house when I'm down there brewing since I don't have a laptop yet. Is there any way I can use his laptop computer and my beersmith down at his place? Thanks
 
*Cross-posting this reply from another thread.*

I installed BeerSmith (both 1.4 a couple of years ago and 2.0 last week) on my flash drive. That lets me run it on any computer. So I'll design recipes on my work computer during my lunch hour, or mess with inventory and ingredients on my desktop at home, then use my laptop on a brew day so I can keep everything with me out on the patio. I had no problems with performance and so far, it looks like 2.0 runs even better on my flash drive than 1.4 did.

Just be sure to "Change Documents Directory" (from the File menu) to point to a location on your flash drive. By default, it tries to look in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\BeerSmith2 on the local computer and then you loose everything when you run it off your flash drive on a different computer (including activation). But once I pointed to a directory on my flash drive, everything has been hunky dory.

Scott
 
All I did was install BeerSmith directly to the flash drive. When prompted during the initial installation for where I wanted to install it, I browsed to my flash drive and picked a location there. After that, it installed and ran fine. (I used the same procedure a couple of years ago when I first purchased 1.4.)

I'm using the Windows version.

Hope that helps.

Scott
 
Thats what I did to, but when I take my flash drive to my friends house to do a brew or talk about a recipe and use his laptop it wants a registration key to pull up the program! I did the "Change Documents Directory" and it still won't work.
 
Hmmm, very weird. I had that same problem with it wanting a registration key on a new machine until I did the "Change Documents Directory". After that, moving the flash drive to a new machine worked without any problems. I don't know what's different.

Maybe Brad has some ideas. For me, running one instance on a flash drive on any machine is more important than having two licenses.
 
When you did the change documents directory what file did you choose on the flash drive?
 
I just pointed it to the same directory where I installed BeerSmith. Where the .exe resides. In my case, that was F:\Apps\BeerSmith2

*Note* F:\ changes depending on what drive letter is available on the computer I plug it in to. On my laptop, that becomes E:\ and everything still runs.
Also, "Apps" was a directory I created on my flash drive where I put all my portable apps.
 
Well hell. I did the same thing and it still didn't work. Maybe I should delete and re-install! Hell I don't know! Thanks again for the help.









 
Okay, now I'm worried that I have some lucky fluke going on and it's going to quit working for me. I'll play around and see if I can't figure out why it's working.

And maybe Brad will chime in?  :)
 
Hi,
  If you want both the program and your documents on the same drive (shared, flash or whatever) I strongly recommend putting them in two different directories - install the program to one (such as F:\BeerSmith-Program) and then use the Change Directory command on the File menu to change your Documents to another directory (such as F:\BeerSmith-Docs).

  That way if you ever do updates to the program it won't risk overwriting your data - as they belong in separate directories.

Brad
 
BeerSmith said:
Hi,
  If you want both the program and your documents on the same drive (shared, flash or whatever) I strongly recommend putting them in two different directories - install the program to one (such as F:\BeerSmith-Program) and then use the Change Directory command on the File menu to change your Documents to another directory (such as F:\BeerSmith-Docs).

  That way if you ever do updates to the program it won't risk overwriting your data - as they belong in separate directories.

Brad

I will do that immediately. Thanks for the recommendation!
 
I have the program on My Flash Drive as well (thought I was the only Genius?); for the same reason.. I can take it and work on the details when I brew at my buddies...

 
I have now tried Portableapps on the flash drive and Beersmith still wants to be registered when I open it on another computer! Tried Dropbox also but Beersmith won't open from there!
 
I couldn't get it to work on my Flash Drive either, which a huge bummer. I like to install it to my flash drive and do my main recipe formulation on my desktop, but take a laptop out to the brewhouse on brewday and having beersmith on my flash drive allows me to move from computer to computer with all the recipes and files on a portable drive. It is also extremely handy for bringing to homebrew club meetings. I hope we are able to find a way to make this work, this is the sort of program that is is a huge benefit to have it working on a flash drive. Aside from that, Beersmith 2.0 is simply awesome.
 
I tried a flash drive installation and it caused my desktop installation to look for its files on the flash drive (no good--I couldn't run BeerSmith without the flash drive).  I'm sure I could get around this but I was just checking to see if I could do it and didn't want to take the time to mess around with it.  The next thing I tried was changing the BeerSmith directory on my netbook to use the files on my desktop and this worked great.  As others have already warned, be sure to only run 1 BeerSmith at a time.  The problem with using a directory over my home wireless is I have some dead spots in the garage and if the wireless disconnects BeerSmith won't run right. 

I finally tried dropbox as others have suggested and it is the best solution I have found.  I have Identical directories on the desktop and netbook and they sync to the internet when available. Again, only run 1 BeerSmith at a time!  I just turn the netbook on in the house before I go out to brew, make sure the dropbox folder is up to date (dropbox has icon overlays that show if the folders are up to date) then go outside to the garage to brew--no problems.

My 2 rules for my use of dropbox, 1)only 1 BeerSmith running at a time and 2)When switching to the netbook never start BeerSmith until the dropbox folder is up to date.
 
Well, it WAS working on my flash drive, but now it's not.

I mean, it still runs fine, but when I tried it on another computer yesterday, it suddenly asked for registration again. I exited without registering and when I got home, I tried it on my laptop (where I had run it before from the flash drive) and it reopened just fine with all my settings, equipment, and recipes.

I'm not sure why it worked for a while where I could plug the flash drive into any computer and it would open properly without thinking it was a new installation and requiring registration.

There must be a setting or something somewhere, probably in the Registry. I'll try digging around and see what I can learn, unless Brad has any more suggestions.

Scott
 
Hi,
  Try installing BeerSmith to the normal hard drive on both computers.  Then use the "Change Documents Directory" on the File menu to point your documents directory to a new directory (you already created) on your flash drive.

  On the second computer do the same thing - install it normally then point your documents directory to the flash drive.

  Then enter your registration keys (likely needed on both computers - enter the same one) and finally after all is working then import your recipes/data.

  Don't import your recipes until you have this working - as changing directories on the second computer will just overwrite everything on the flash drive documents directory.

If you do this all correctly you should be able to move the flash drive back and forth without breaking anything as long as you have the flash drive inserted before running BeerSmith.

Brad
 
BeerSmith said:
Hi,
  Try installing BeerSmith to the normal hard drive on both computers.  Then use the "Change Documents Directory" on the File menu to point your documents directory to a new directory (you already created) on your flash drive.

  On the second computer do the same thing - install it normally then point your documents directory to the flash drive.

  Then enter your registration keys (likely needed on both computers - enter the same one) and finally after all is working then import your recipes/data.

  Don't import your recipes until you have this working - as changing directories on the second computer will just overwrite everything on the flash drive documents directory.

If you do this all correctly you should be able to move the flash drive back and forth without breaking anything as long as you have the flash drive inserted before running BeerSmith.

Brad

Unfortunately, this almost defeats the purpose of why I want to run Beersmith on my flash drive because it still requires installing Beersmith on the individual computers.

With Beersmith 1.4, I could install Beersmith on my flash drive and then run it on ANY computer at any time. I want to be able to do that with Beersmith 2.

This weekend, I was talking to a new brewer (he's done two batches) and I was raving about Beersmith. He was extremely interested in the program from what I was telling him. I wanted to pull out my flash drive, plug it into his computer, and run Beersmith so he could see all the wonderfulness of the tool. But when I tried that, it prompted me for registration. I exited so it wouldn't overwrite my settings and recipes, but it meant I couldn't show him all the goodies of the program like I wanted.
 
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