Finding Lytec Data Files

If you're having a problem with your Lytec database, the following instructions can help you get the affected file or files to Kyle for examination.


Finding the File or Files

To locate the Windows folder that contains your data, close your Lytec system and go to the Windows Start Menu. Select "Find..." and then from the fly-out menu "Files or Folders..." to get this dialog window:

Windows Find Dialog example 1

This is the standard Windows "Find" utility. I've added bold red numbers to indicate the steps to follow. First, type the name of any one of your Lytec data files in the "Named:" box (1). For the example I used "JkDemo03.dat". Next, click the triangle at the right side of the "Look in:" box (2) to pull down the scroll bar, and scroll the list up to its top to highlight "My Computer." Click that and the box will then look similar to the screen shot but without the list of files found. Be sure the "Include subfolders" box is checked, but you should not need to do anything to make this happen. Step 3 is to click the "Find" button. The utility will search your entire network and display a list of the files it locates (4). If you see more than one file in the list, use the one with the most recent "Modified" date (5th column in the list; I failed to follow this rule when creating these examples). You can see that the "In Folder" column of this list (4) has dots, indicating that it could not show the entire folder name to you. The next steps will correct this, making the column wide enough to show the name.

Windows Find Dialog example 2

First, move the mouse pointer to the vertical bar that separates the "In Folder" and "Size" headings on the title bar of the list, and note that it changes to a cross with arrowheads on its horizontal bar(5). Hold down the left mouse button and drag this bar to the right as indicated by the red arrow above.

Windows Find Dialog example 3

This expands the column(6). Drag it until the dots disappear and you can read the entire folder name (7). Write down that full folder name and send it along with the files; this allows Kyle to customize the returned file package to go automatically to the right location. Now click the "X" in the upper righthand corner of the Find dialog to close the utility.

The next step is to click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, and navigate down the tree of folders until you reach the folder you just wrote down. When you get there you will see a large number of files whose names end with two numbers and ".dat" such as "JkDemo01.dat" and "JkDemo08.dat" (although the first part of the names will be different for your practice). Click on the "View" choice from the menu bar, select "Detail" from the pull-down menu, then put your mouse pointer on the "Type" column title bar and click it to sort the display by type and pull all of the "DAT" files together. Then go back to the "View" menu and choose "List" to see the files displayed with small icons. You're now ready to compress all the files into a single package to send to Kyle.

Compressing the Files

Once you've located the file (or files) involved in your error situation, the next step is to pack them together into a compressed package that you can attach to an Email message. While many compression utilities are available, this example shows the use of the shareware utility WinZip (for a link to its web site, see the Data Recovery page here). When you install WinZip and tell it to add itself to the "context menu", you can then just right-click on a file or group of files in the "My Computer" display. First, select the LAST of the DAT files (9) and click the left button to highlight it. Then move the mouse pointer to the first of the DAT files (10), press and hold the shift key, and click the left button again. This will highlight all of the DAT files as shown here. With the mouse pointer anywhere in the highlighted area, click the right button to bring up the context menu.

WinZip's context menu example

One of the options in this menu is "Add to Zip" (11). Choosing this one brings up WinZip, all ready to copy the selected files into a new or existing compressed file. Your context menu won't look exactly like this one, unless you've installed the same set of utilities, but the WinZip lines will be in approximately the same locations. See the WinZip help file itself for detailed instructions on using the utility; in general, the suggested options that come up automatically will be adequate for this purpose and all you'll have to add will be a filename to assign to the compressed file. It's best to use your own name for this, to prevent confusion at Kyle's server!

Sending to Kyle

The final step of the process is to send the compressed file to Kyle. The simplest way to do this is to use his SendKyle program (see the Data Recovery page here for details). However if you have an FTP program and are comfortable with its use, you can use it to send the file to "jimkyle.dns2go.com/Incoming" and it will get to the same destination. Expect the transfer to take about 4 minutes per megabyte. If you have problems, call Kyle at 1-405-728-3316 for help.

That's the process. Good luck!