First time having my students play around with arduino. Unfortunately, when I install the software it will not run for students with their logons (mine has admin rights and it works fine.) When they open the program I see an error "cannot create folder..." (someplace on our network where our students do not have access). Any idea what I can do to resolve this problem? I tried changing the folder in permissions on my account to a different folder where they are supposed to have access but still encountered the same problem.
Version 1.6.x (don't use 1.6.8 - it's no good on windows due to serial handling bug) should put the files into the users AppData folder and the user's sketchbook folder (Which it creates in their documents folder).
Both of those locations are places where users typically have full access...
That said, you'll have a hard time finding people who know how to fix this - most of us here are hobbyists, and so the first thing we do when we get a new computer is deep six UAC and it's ilk.,
Sounds like it is being installed on a local basis but IMHO that is probably the wrong way to go.
Depending on the server installation I think the best bet is to get the server admin to push the install from the SERVER and not local workstations.
If the students are set up as a GROUP then he could push it to just that group / class.
From there you could set the correct permissions too in one shot.
That way everyone has it with the correct permissions.
I used that method to install a couple of programs (Not arduino related) so that files were shared from one central location and any resulting output from the programs stayed in the server.
Similar to installing MS Office from a central company server.
That method also allows quick and easy roll back for everyone too or to be able to share a copy of a document (or probably sketch) so that they can collaborate.
My home server is currently in rebuild of an array right now so I cant really check if I can do it with Arduino
westfw:
Surely someone somewhere has a tutorial for installing the Arduino IDE on a typical "locked down" school Windows environment?
There does not appear to be a lot of school teachers and administrators that are dealing with typical locked down Windows who finally figure this out, and reply to their initial post with information about what finally worked. I'll bet pert's idea about creating the portable folder is the most likely solution, and have students unzip the IDE and put it in portable mode in their home directories. I have heard of people booting Linux live DVDs or live DVD images on thumb drives, with Arduino IDE installed on them. Accessing codebender.cc with Chrome may be a good idea, but then schools often prevent use of Chrome. Ballscrewbob's idea implies the teacher has cooperation and collaboration with the IT dept. of the school and a knowledgeable IT person, which often is difficult because so many schools think they can run an IT dept. with underpaid/overworked staff.
Whilst you are correct in that quite a few schools run IT on a shoestring I happen to know a few teachers.
The ones I know of can count on the IT department very well in different schools even in Northern Ontario.
And for anyone with even a reasonable semblance of IT understanding if they have access to the server itself then there are so many sources of reference on the internet for doing just such a task as to make it almost painless.