Hi Simon,

 

Thanks for your interest in MGET. I'm sorry you're having problems getting it working. Hopefully I can help.

 

Because you've experienced a number of problems, I think the best approach is to remove MGET and try again with the latest version. You are right that the Add/Remove Programs dialog is the right place to remove it. After you click the Change/Remove button, you should be prompted with the message "Are you sure you want to remove the package from the computer?". If you click Yes, MGET will attempt to remove itself from the ArcToolbox list of toolboxes in ArcCatalog and ArcMap and then delete the MGET code from Python's directory. Removing the MGET from the ArcToolbox list can take a long time, usually 30-60 seconds. During this time the computer may appear to be doing nothing, although your hard drive light may be active, and you may see ArcCatalog pop up for a few seconds and then disappear. When all of this is finally done you will see a dialog with the title "Uninstall Finished" and the message "XXXX files and YYY directories removed".

 

If you did not see these dialogs when you uninstalled, I am not sure what happened. The problem may be with the Python code that MGET uses for installation and removal, or with Microsoft's Windows Installer. In any case, I recommend the following procedure for manually removing MGET. This procedure assumes you tried the Add/Remove Programs approach without apparent success.

 

1.    Close Add/Remove programs, if it is open.

2.    Shut down all ArcGIS applications (ArcMap, ArcCatalog, etc).

3.    Start ArcCatalog.

4.    Go to the ArcToolbox window (if not visible, click the red toolbox icon in the toolbar). If you see "Marine Geospatial Ecology Tools" listed as a toolbox, right-click on it and select Remove.

5.    Close ArcCatalog.

6.    With Windows Explorer, go to C:\PythonXY\Lib\site-packages, where XY is your Python version such as 25 or 24. If you see a subdirectory called GeoEco, delete it.

7.    Go to C:\PythonXY\Scripts. If you see

8.    Go to C:\Program Files. If you see a subdirectory called GeoEco, delete it. (This should only exist if you previously installed MGET 0.7a12 or later).

9.    Open Add/Remove programs. If you see a program called Python 2.X GeoEco …, (where X is 4 or 5), click Change/Remove. You may be prompted with a message saying

 

That procedure removes all of MGET except for some registry entries, which will not affect you, and a couple of other Python files. Manually removing these is very laborious and not necessary, so I'm not going to describe it here.

 

Now you are ready to try MGET again. Before doing this, I recommend you ensure that you can start the ArcCatalog program successfully, just to make sure your ArcGIS licensing is working right. After starting it, just shut it back down again. (MGET requires that no ArcGIS applications be running when it installs. It checks for this, so if you left it open, the MGET installer should prompt you to close it. But ArcGIS does not report to MGET when there is a problem with the license server—it makes MGET think that everything is ok—so checking this ahead of time will ensure you avoid the problem.)

 

Now try installing the latest version of MGET, 0.7a15. In MGET 0.7a12, we added some additional diagnostics to the installation program to detect some common issues. These are checked before any files are installed. If you see the installer start the progress bars, those tests passed. Once the progress bars reach the end, the installation program will appear to hang for a while. During this time, MGET is starting ArcCatalog to register MGET with the ArcToolbox list. This typically takes 30-60 seconds, but can take longer. ArcCatalog may flash up for a few seconds. Eventually you should see a dialog saying "All installation tasks completed successfully" or some other message indicating a failure.

 

Assuming it installed successfully, I recommend reading the following ArcGIS documentation on managing toolboxes. The important thing to take from this is: Each ArcMap document has its own custom list of toolboxes. When you create a new map, this is initialized with a copy of the master list maintained by ArcCatalog. Understanding the details of this will help when you expect to see a toolbox but don't see it.

 

http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.2/index.cfm?TopicName=Geoprocessing_settings%3A_managing_ArcToolbox_contents

 

Best regards,

 

Jason

 

 

Dear Jason,

First off - my apologies for bothering you already - I was really hoping i'd make it through the first day without resorting to the helpline!

I'm trying to analyse some remote sensing MODIS data (in BIL format) in combination with satellite tracks from Heaviside's dolphins.   

I've used Arcview for some time now but have recently upgraded to ArcMap, so i'm not that up to speed with all the ins and outs.

I'm running ArcGIS 9.3 SP1 on an XP computer with SP3
I have Python 2.5.1
I loaded MGET:          GeoEco-0.7a9.win32-py2.5

by just running the application which went smoothly enough but the MGET toolbox hasn't showed up in the Toolbox kit in ArcMap.

Having worked slowly through the installation instructions i don't seem to have missed anything as all your instructions about python were for people without arcmap.

I did a little reboot in the hope that it would help - no luck.  Tried to remove the programme through the add/remove programmes dialog and Python 2.5 GeoEco-0.7a9 shows up, and when i clickchange/remove it asks for confirmation - and then it does nothing. 

Am a bit baffled as to how to proceed as I can't reinstall it and i can't remove it! 
Hope you can help, and thanks for putting this whole programme together and making it available!

Regards
Simon Elwen





------------------------------------------------
Simon Elwen Ph.D
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Mammal Research Institute
University of Pretoria
+27 71 139 5951 (mob SA)
+27 12 420 4608 (office tel)
+27 12 420 2354(office fax)
Skype: s_elwen

Namibian Dolphin Project
http://namibiandolphinproject.blogspot.com/