LastCheck.dat

[David Thompson]

>Sometimes when I open a database the following window will pop up:
>
>File ³LastCheck.dat² or disk may be locked or busy. Unlock and try again.
>
>What does that mean? How can I fix it?
>
>I¹d appreciate any insight.

Inside your Panorama folder there is a folder 
named "Extensions." Inside that folder is a 
folder named "News & Updates" and inside that 
there are several files, one of which should be 
named "LastCheck.dat". The most likely reason for 
this problem is that your user account doesn't 
have write permission for the LastCheck.dat file. 
Another, less likely possibility is that the 
LastCheck.dat file is missing and your account 
doesn't have write permission for the News & 
Updates folder.

In the Finder, you should select the News & 
Updates folder and choose "Get Info" from the 
Finder's File menu. Open the section labeled 
Ownership & Permissions: and also the Details: 
section below it. Check to see if the owner group 
and others all have Read & Write access. If not, 
you should change it. You will need to be logged 
in under the administrator account that owns that 
folder before you can change the permission.

Once you have checked, and/or changed the 
permissions for the folder, you should do the 
same for each of the files inside the folder.

This problem is occurring when Panorama checks 
the Provue web site to see if a new version has 
been released. After checking, it updates the 
contents of LastCheck.dat, so that the next time 
it launches it will know that it has checked 
recently and it doesn't need to do that for 
awhile. If your account doesn't have permission 
to change that file, you will get the error you 
mentioned.

As Jim said in the email that just arrived, the 
issue has been resolved in Panorama 5.5. The 
installer automatically gives read and write 
permission to everyone. In Panorama V, only the 
administrator account that was used to install 
had permission to change that file. Panorama 5.5 
also has a File Permissions wizard, which can 
check and correct the permissions of the files in 
your Panorama folder.

Dave