Hi,

I'm a new user, playing with 2.30.1 on Win2K. I'd really like to use the autosave function to periodically save both data and images. However, after playing with the program, reading the docs, and reading the tutorial, I'm still confused (and can't get it to work).

For testing I set the save interval to 2 minutes, with an appropriate path (to an existing directory, no illegal characters in filenames). I then traced 10 times with an interval of 30 seconds. Shouldn't I end up with data and images saved every 2 minutes during that trace? Maximum samples to hold in memory is set to zero.

I haven't purchased a license yet because first I want to see if this works. Is this only available in the licensed version?

Thanks.

The shareware version is full-functioned. There are no features in the licensed version that are not in the trial evaluation version you have installed.

So, let's figure out what's going on.

You should be getting data and images starting at 2 minutes after you start tracing (or whatever your interval is). Ping Plotter tries to make a valid path, and you can see what the path is that it *thinks* it's going to use by floating over the filename boxes and looking at the hint. This will give you an idea of how Ping Plotter will parse things out - and what directory it will put them in. A common problem is when a path isn't specified, but it sounds like you did that.

If your path looks good, use Explorer to browse to your Ping Plotter directory and look to see if you have a PP_Errors.log file there. There are certain errors that Ping Plotter supresses and writes to this log instead of showing on the screen. If Ping Plotter has any problems writing to a file, it will put the errors here.

So, a couple of steps:

1) Float your mouse over the filename edit box(es) and see what path Ping Plotter is thinking of using. This works best if you've already started to trace to someplace, as the host and times will be parseable then. Also, floating over the filename boxes won't work if you have the checkmarks turned off to auto-save.

2) Check your PP_Errors.log file in your Ping Plotter directory. See if there are errors in it. Hopefully, if there is, the errors will be self-explanetory and you'll be able to get things working.

3) Post back here with your findings and we'll either cheer with you (if it works), or dig deeper in to determine the problem.

- Pete

Aaarghh, stupid error on my part...I had a small typo in my path. Thanks for the pointer to the error log file. My path is D:\temp\pingplotter and it turns out I entered "pingplottter" instead of "pingplotter." I fixed that and everything is working fine. Sorry for the unnecessary post!