Software Collection, Department of Mathematics, University of York

Installing MikTeX if your CDROM drive is not D:

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It seems that I was a little optimistic in saying in the original README that installation from a drive other than D: was entirely straightforward. In fact, the MikTeX installation wizard complains about "invalid or missing command-line option(s)". (Other applications, as far as I know, install without difficulty).

Here's a workaround for the MikTeX wizard problem.

  1. Create a working folder on your C: drive.
  2. From the "distributions" folder on the CD, copy the file "setup_miktex.exe" to the working folder. Depending on how your copy of Windows is configured, you might see the truncated name "setup_miktex"; this doesn't matter.
  3. Download one of the following two files to your working folder. Note that just clicking on the link in the usual way might not work (you might see the contents of the file in your browser, which isn't terribly useful). In Internet Explorer, the most reliable way to download is to right-click the link then click on "Save target as ..." and browse to find your working folder. Similar things probably work in other browsers.
    Configuration if your CDROM drive is E:
    Configuration if your CDROM drive is some other letter.
  4. Double-click on "setup_miktex.exe" in your working folder. If you downloaded the file for drive E:, you can now follow the original instructions. If you downloaded the other file then, when the installation wizard asks for the local package repository, you'll need to browse for the folder called "miktex-2.3-repository" on the top level of the CD.

Alternative workaround for the confident:

  1. Create a working folder on C: and copy into it both "setup_miktex.exe" and "setupwiz.opt" from the "distributions" folder on the CD.
  2. Look at the properties of the copy of setupwiz.opt and make sure that "Read only" is not checked.
  3. Edit the copy of setupwiz.opt with your favourite text editor (e.g. notepad or MicroEMACS) and in the second line change d: to z:, or whatever your CDROM drive is called
  4. Save the file then double-click on "setup_miktex.exe" in the working folder. You can now follow the original instructions.

However you do it, the working folder can safely be deleted after installation.

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