Installing, upgrading, removing

 
How Can I See What Changed?

The History Of Changes page shows you what changed in each version.
 

Upgrading ATM

Download and install the new version as normal. You do not need to uninstall the old version of ATM. In fact better to leave it for now.

What we recommend is that you install each new version into a new directory. E.g.

• v3.2.0 --> c:\Program Files\Thinking Stuff\ATM v3.2.0
• v3.2.1 --> c:\Program Files\Thinking Stuff\ATM v3.2.1

And so on.
 

If you want to continue using the old version

Let's say your current version is working fine, but you want to install a new version to test it out and see if it's worth the upgrade. While you are testing the new version you will still want to use the old version. That means you need 2 copies of the settings files and all of the associated price history files.

1. Follow these instructions to copy an entire setup.
2. Use the old version of ATM to open the copy of the settings file. Go immediately to the Options window. Change the price history file location. Close ATM. Failure to do this step will mean the wrong price history files will get upgraded.
3. Use the new version of ATM to open the copy of the settings file. That settings file and its associated price history files will then be upgraded.
4. Because the old version of the settings file will still be in the same location, with the same name and same version number, you can still use it with the old version of ATM. But note that if you make any changes to the old file, then you will need to go through the upgrade process again when you decide to commit to the new version of ATM. But at that time you wouldn't need to go through all this again - just use the steps in "Upgrading Files" below.

If you have no intention of using the old version

We still highly recommend you take a backup of the settings file and all the price history files.
 

Upgrading Files

Start the new version of ATM. When you open a settings file that needs upgrading, ATM will take you through the upgrade process. Part of that is asking you if you want to make a backup or not. We highly recommend that you tell ATM to do the backup.

If something goes wrong during the upgrade, it's very difficult to go back a version. You would be stuck until we released yet a 3rd version that fixed the problem you encountered. But if you had a backup of all files, then the reversion would be quite simple.
 

Uninstalling the old version

Once you decide that you want to permanently move to using the new version of ATM, you can uninstall the old version. Do that by going to the Window's Control Panel, then "Add/Remove Programs" (WinXP and before) or "Programs and Features" (Vista and above). Find the old version of ATM in the list. Select it and click "Remove".
 

 
Uninstall ATM

A few ways to initiate this:

• Click the Windows start button, navigate to the "Thinking Stuff's ATM vX.Y.Z" group, click "Uninstall Thinking Stuff's ATM"
• Click the Windows start button, then Control Panel, then "Add/Remove Programs" (XP and below) or "Programs and Features" (Vista and above). Find the right version of ATM and click to uninstall it.
• Use something like Revo Uninstaller, which does a more thorough job of uninstalling stuff.
   

Delete extra files

If you are uninstalling for the purposes of upgrading to a new version, you are all done.

If you want to remove all traces of ATM from your machine, then there are some more steps involved. Uninstallers can only remove files that were part of the original installation. Any files created by the program itself are not removed, i.e. your settings files, the price history files, etc. You will have to delete them by yourself.

• The settings files. Only you know where you created these. They end in .tsatm so you could search your computer.
• The price history files. They end in .tsphd
• The ini file - search for tsatm.ini
• The ATM installation directory, normally somewhere like "c:\Program Files\Thinking Stuff\ATM vX.Y.Z". Sometimes it might be left behind even though it's empty.

Everything is a nifty little tool which can search your computer in seconds.
 

The ATM installer file should prompt you to install anything that ATM needs and you don't already have. Download it here. Run it. Follow the prompts.

The ATM installer can also install the bits required by FXCM, if you ask it to.

You might notice that you can actually choose to opt out of installing the ATM stuff. A bit weird when it's the ATM installer? The first time through, and call me crazy, but I imagine you would choose to install ATM. But maybe you opt out of FXCM. A bit later you might change your mind and want FXCM. So during the second time you are running the ATM installer, you can now install just the FXCM stuff without having to re-install ATM.

If you don't have the .NET Framework, the ATM installer can download and install that for you as well (it's a bit big to include in the installer itself, and most people already have it). If the download fails, follow these steps to install it yourself.
 

Here's what a customer wrote to me:

In the screens of my ATM installation the text is truncated, either vertically, horizontally or both. It is as if the text is too large for the space allocated for it. I have tried changing my screen resolution but the same thing happens.

In Windows XP Help, there is a solution named: "To increase or decrease the size of objects and text on your screen". My DPI setting (Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced > General) was wrong and was set to: "Large size (120 DPI)". When I used the "Normal size (96 DPI)" setting, ATM screens appeared as they should.

On my 17", Dell Inspiron 9400 notebook I then found that - in Control Panel > Display > Appearance - I had to also make sure the Font size was set to normal. If that was changed to large, to compensate for the small text in the Start Menu, Windows Explorer etc., I got a ATM result between the unusable original and the optimum.

Or here's another possible solution:
http://blogs.msdn.com/noahc/archive/2008/06/23/embedded-ie-text-size-too-small-or-large.aspx
 

This may come about if you install ATM once, install either the same or different version again into a different location, then uninstall either of those. The error message maybe something like:

Exception of type 'System.Windows.Forms.AxHost+InvalidActiveXStateException' was thrown.

Here's what happens:

1. Install ATM - registers charting component
2. Install ATM again in a different directory - registers charting component
3. Uninstall either of those - unregisters charting component

You are now left with one installation of ATM, but the charting component is unregistered. All you have to do, is re-register it.

Click the Windows Start button at the lower left-hand corner of your screen. In XP and below, click "Run...". In Vista and above, search for "Run", then right-click on the "Run" icon and select "Run as administrator".

A little box appears.

Type or copy and paste the following, exactly, in the field in that little box:

REGSVR32 "c:\Program Files\Thinking Stuff\ATM v3.0.0\StockChartX.ocx"

The quotation marks are necessary. You may also need to alter the installation directory.

And then press the Enter key, or click the Ok button.

Now that's done, try to open the Charts window again. The fact that it opens at all is a sign of success. If it still does not work, check the directory is correct.
 

You need to have the .NET Framework installed, v2.0 at a minimum. Vista and above have the framework already. For earlier versions of windows, the ATM installer should have asked you if you wanted to also install the .NET Framework.

You could uninstall ATM and run the installer again, this time opting to also install the framework. Or you can download the latest version of the framework from Microsoft and install it yourself. (v2.0 is the minimum required version, but you should get the most recent version that is compatible with your version of Windows). ATM should then work after a reboot of your computer.