data on portable drive

[coys]

I run pokertracker and postgreSQL on 2 computers. My data is kept on a portable drive that I plug into whichever computer I am playing poker on. This has worked perfectly until last week when one of the computers became damaged and had to be replaced. I am having a lot of difficulty running postgreSQL on my new computer. Once installed the service cannot start, either manually or automatically, and I am really not sure if I have correctly installed it bearing in mind that my data is on a different drive to where the application is located. Both of the old installations were on XP, this new one is on Vista. Can anyone help me by detailing the correct steps I have to take in order for this installation to work again? Thank you in advance.

[ptrack pat]

Did you disable the UAC when you installed PostgreSQL on Vista?
When you installed PostgreSQL, what version was it? The same one as used before and not a new version?
When you installed PostgreSQL, did you tell it the data folder was on this other drive and then when you got to the "Initialize database cluster" window, did you uncheck that box?

[coys]

Hi Pat

Yes I disabled UAC (is turned off permanently), version is 8.2 same as old install and yes I said where data was on install and unchecked the initialize database option. My data is in F:\tracker\ which is where I browsed to at that part of the install.

[ptrack pat]

Are you still able to access the external drive db from the other computer?

On the F drive, in the data folder there might be a file called postmaster.pid. If there is, rename that file, restart the Vista computer and then see if you can connect to it after it restarts.

[coys]

Hi Pat

I found the original installation files I used when first installing postgreSQL and used those, problem seems to be fixed now. Looks like I was trying to install from 8.2.6 when I should have been using 8.2.1 . Thank you for your help.