When doing a complete install to a hard drive, the October 1950 issue is not copied.

Hello i found a error on the June 2002 issue page to the right of Forum it has a Tasters choice advert. but in the magazine it is a Canon EOS ELAN7e advert,thank you

I can't believe that this program was published without a means to rotate the pictures. My computer doesn't take kindly to bering laid on it's side. This should be a priority upgrade!

Nice post.

Rotation is definitely on our list of priorities, too, Richard!

Gregorio, we've responded to your post in email.

I can't believe that this program was published without a means to rotate the pictures. My computer doesn't take kindly to bering laid on it's side. This should be a priority upgrade!

I had CNG working with all DVDs on my hard drive according with the instruction on you site. I use MAc OS 10.6. The DVDs are in
user>library>preferences>com.nationalgeographic.cngxxxxxx>Local Store>cache

and again it was working fine with version 1.24 (I think). I made the mistake" of updating to 1.26 and now it doesn't work any longer.

@ ML:

Thank you, your fix worked beautifully.

@ NatGeo:

Shame on you for selling such a bloated, slow, crapulous piece of software. I can't believe I paid $200 for this.

Have all of the image files in the cache folder. Copied all install files and folders to a folder on the desktop and installed. Can open program, and browse by cover or year etc, but can't open any of the issues to read. Help?

I followed the procedure that Eduardo outlined but I made one change. Because I like to keep my files/folders tidy I did not want to keep all of the National Geographic discs at the root level. If you are comfortable at the command prompt and like to keep your folders organized then follow this tip. The idea is that we are going to make a new drive letter that points to a folder.

Copy the dvds to a folder on your desired drive (I am using a physical hard drive, not an external... an external drive may not be compatible with this procedure). My DVDs were copied to F:\CNG\.

Open the command prompt (XP: Start Menu-> Run-> cmd.exe, Win 7: Start Menu->type CMD)

Type:
subst X: F:\CNG\
Where X is your new drive letter (ensure that it is a letter that is not currently in use) and F:\CNG is the location of the copied DVDs
Hit ENTER and you should now have a new drive letter that points to your dvds.

Now install the program from the new drive letter and it all should work as Eduardo pointed out.

Windows Subst commmand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subst

Hi Eduardo, thanks for that. The problem is, you say to 'open the program' once it is installed into my hard drive. How do I open it without a shortcut? I can't see any files on the hard drive that will launch the program rather than the installer (which just tells me the programme is already installed). Can anyone help?

I ordered my DVD from amazon.com and the folder names on it are in an Asian script which I can't read. So I can't copy the 'disc one' folder to the cache folder as I don't know which folder this is! Is it the first folder in the list on each DVD? Answers gratefully received!

READ HERE - The EASY WAY to use the DVDs in an external hard drive configuration. This works for both OS X Leopard and Windows 7 (should also work on Window XP but need to be tested).

Step 1 - Before any installation Copy the entire content of all the DVDs to the root (i.e. D:\) of the external drive. You will end up with the installation programs, other files, and the six folder with the content (Disk1 to Disk6). Note: copying them in a subdirectory instead that the bottom level (root level) does not work

Step 2 - run the installation program from the external drive (this is key).

Step 3 - open the program and click ok when it asks to insert Disk 1. The program will look for disk 1 on the drive that was installed from, the external drive, and will find all others automatically.
NOTE: If you had already install the program from the DVD before reading this uninstall the program using the uninstaller and manually delete the Data folder and all its content. The data folder name starts with "com.nationalgeographic" for all platform. Actual location listed below.

Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\com.nationalgeographic.products.cng120.68B1CC4249876152EBE333BD4B7514ADB4D94062.1

Vista and Win7 C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\com.nationalgeographic.products.cng120.68B1CC4249876152EBE333BD4B7514ADB4D94062.1

OR

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\com.nationalgeographic.products.cng120.68B1CC4249876152EBE333BD4B7514ADB4D94062.1

Many many thanks for the tips.

I would also like to copy the DVDs onto my external hard drive instead of my C drive. Is there a way to do that yet? Anybody?
CLEAR Wireless Internet

Any ETA on the patch / update that will allow copy to hard drive other then c: ?

Can you provide status on the REAL fix for loading the data to my drive, one other than my system drive. This was promised for November, but all we have is hacks. How are those going to work with corrections or updates to the data?

DO NOT PURCHASE THIS PRODUCT. I purchased this program after promises were made about ease of use and availability of certain still unavailable features. I am a highly experienced computer user and have tested the very limited capacity of this program. I have found that it is extremely non-user friendly and is not a improvement except in modern looks over the decade old version. Magnification tools are useless and have to be activated over and over again for each page. The images are of mediocre quality and the text hurts the eyes even after magnification and "text enhancement." The scroll wheel could have been used for fast magnification but has no function. This causes high usage of left mouse clicks. The keyboard commands are highly misplaced and very awkward. I have had the updated version 1.23 crash and misread cache files more than 3 times in a half hour period. I purchased mine through Barnes and Nobles but they will not except opened shrink wrapped returns. I contacted NATGEO through their website phone number and was transfered three times before being told that they would not honor any reimbursement. Kind of funny, because their website says, after clicking the customer service link, that "if disatisfied we will make things right" (loose quote). Making things right is giving me my money back. A computer manufacturer honors his product no matter what store you buy it from. Makes me sick that my grandmother just bought me a two year subscription to this pack of losers.

Product is not working properly. I have a six year old Compaq Presario desktop with Windows XP, 86 GB of free space on my C drive, and a one or two GHZ processor. When the opening page comes up, it more than fills up my computer screen, so that I cannot access all of the buttons. I also cannot shutdown the CNG without going through Control Alt Delete. When I am able to access one specific page of a specific magazine issue, I cannot turn to any other pages. I am extremely disappointed in this product

Using Snow Leopard, I copied the six "discN" directories into a directory on an external USB drive, then created symbolic links from the cache directory to the USB drive. This appears to work, though I have run into a couple of instances where I had to restart the CNG application.

"CNG Support Team said:
In the meantime, functionality for copying DVDs where you want will be activated in January. No specific day yet."

This sounds very good. I am waiting for this update as I use a SSD for my C: drive and I don't want to use up this much space for CNG.

This product is not ready for prime time (i.e. should not be sold to anyone in its present form). The time to move from page to page using the DVDs is ridiculously slow. It is virtually unuseable in its present form. I presume that once loaded on a harddrive it will operate faster. I cannot believe that the creators of this software do not have a convenient means of getting the stuff on an external harddrive. The poor performance reminds me of the crappy software that was seen in the 1980s. Can I return the product for a refund?

Vince

After I copy the DVD's to the cache folder, how do I make the data available to other users? I did the software install as an administrative user, but I want general users to use the application.

Kip, we mentioned that some users have posted their own workarounds for copying the DVDs to external drives or local drives other than C:. You'll find those comments posted various entries on this blog. Our team has not completed testing those workarounds, so we can't verify that they all work. Once we get validation from the team we'll post them. In the meantime, functionality for copying DVDs where you want will be activated in January. No specific day yet.

Kip, we mentioned that some users have posted their own workarounds for copying the DVDs to external drives or local drives other than C:. You'll find those comments posted various entries on this blog. Our team has not completed testing those workarounds, so we can't verify that they all work. Once we get validation from the team we'll post them. In the meantime, functionality for copying DVDs where you want will be activated in January. No specific day yet.

I use MacOS Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

I am unable to follow your instructions to download the cng to my hard drive.

I found cache folders through the Finder under the Applications. There were four cache folders, but no reference to National Geographic.

I am I looking in the right place?

Help!!

Thank You.

I wrote up back on Dec 1 a way to copy all DVD's onto a partition other than C. Here is the link to that now archived section-
http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/cng_support_hub/2009/11/pc-systems-copytohard-drive-in.html#comment-14555

By following the directions mentioned by CNG in combination with the PC World article, Move all your data to a New Partition (pg 1) http://www.pcworld.com/article/125730/answer_line_move_all_of_your_valuable_data_to_a_new_partition.html

I was able to copy all 6 DVD's to my E Partition. One thing I neglected to mention, after copying everything and launching the CNG program, I went into the preferences, clicked on the install options tab and was able to click on browse and specify the location of the new cache image directory where I had just copied 6 DVD's (on my E partition, not C).

It took 2-3 hrs per DVD to copy to the Hard Drive. I am running WINXP Pro on a Dell 8400 with a Pentium 4 3Ghz and 4GB of ram. This is a 5 year old computer and it works great.

As previously mentioned, if you are comfortable with messing with the register and troubleshooting, its relatively easy. I hope this helps for those that don't want to wait for the software update solution.

Happy New Year!
Mike Nelson

I cant install the complete natgeo Portable hard drive edition, on my mac v10.6 snow leopard

Help

HORRIBLE PRODUCT! I cant instal CNG and nothing on here is helping! All these instructions are AFTER CNG has been installed! Ruining XMas. Why do they make this SO difficult??????? Thanks Nat Geo... NEVER AGAIN!

The instructions for copying the DVDs to the cache file on a PC seem clear. However, it is less than ideal to put 40 or 50 GB of data on the system partition if other options are available. Can you update the program to give an option for pointing to the cache file location of the user's choice?
Short of that, can you tell me what file to edit to change the cache path manually?

I don't really like your workaround solution. I have 100 GB free but it is not on my C drive. Like most people do, I put huge files, archives and photos etc. on the other drives and reserve the C drive for the installation of essential software. And it is smaller.

I will patiently wait for your real solution when your support team activates the copy-to-disk functionality. But not the C drive, please.

Thanks for your hard work!

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/cng_support_hub/2009/12/update-copytohard-drive-for-pc.html#comments

Where may I find the info on how to copy CNG to a drive other than "C". I keep that drive clean for faster booting. Your answer to "John" (URL above) states there is a blog containing workarounds, but I cannot locate it.

Thanks

Kip

I too would like to copy the DVDs onto my external hard drive instead of my C drive. Is there a way to do that yet? Thanks.

Now that I know how to copy the disc's to my Cache folder in my C-drive ...How do I copy it to my external hard drive so I do not have to take up so much room on my PC's drive(XP)?

-Eddie

CNG Support Team said:
John, the development team hasn't released that functionality or a workaround yet; however, some of the other users have posted their own workarounds in comments on this blog.
======================
It would be nice if you post a link to that info here.

John, the development team hasn't released that functionality or a workaround yet; however, some of the other users have posted their own workarounds in comments on this blog.

Ramin, if you haven't already done so, would you send us more details using the Contact the Support Team link in the left sidebar?

Hi,
Just followed all instructions to copy the DVDs to HD for WinXP. It run first time ok. but second time when i want to run it form HD images wont load . It takes ages to load one page. isnt it supposed to run faster from HD? Any help thanks

Nothing new here.

How can I copy the 6 DVDs to a folder on drive E: ? (and have CNG use them on drive E: without having to insert any DVDs)

I'm Using XP sp3 with 1TB + of Hard disks and 4 GB of RAM

Thanks