Downloading and Installing the Trajectory Plot Program

Trajectory plot is distributed as a zip file or as a self extracting zip.

I have recently upgraded to Windows XP for development of this program. I have seen some problems trying to run earlier versions of Trajectory Plot (V2.4 and earlier) on W2000 machines and later. All future upgrades will only be to the XP platform - I do not know if these updates will work on the older platforms. As such, I will keep a copy of Trajectory Plot V2.4 that was built on and for the Windows 95/98 platform and make it available through this website.

Download Now:

• To install the zip file:
  • Notes:
    • V3.0 adds a new field to the Bullets data base (now "Bullets2.mdb"). The old data base ("Bullets.mdb") may still be used, but can no longer be edited. It is recommended you use Bullets2.mdb (included in the download/install)
    • You will need to manually add / migrate any bullets you have added to Bullets.mdb in to Bullets2.mdb. You can do so using the built in Bullet Data Base editor, or through MS Access, or some other MDB editor (I use MDBPlus).
  • click on the .zip download link and save the file on your computer. Since the next steps will extract a number of files from the zip package, and after installation you will be able to remove these temporary files, it is recommended that you create a temporary directory to store the zip file in.
  • Extract the files
    • In W7 simply select the .zip file, then right-click and select "extract all".
    • Alternatively, using WinZip, or some similar package, extract all the files into the temporary directory
• Using Windows Explorer, browse to the temporary directory and double click on "setup.exe".
• The setup wizard will guide you through your installation. It is recommended that you accept the default locations suggested by the wizard, only because all combinations of other settings have not been verified.
• Notes:
  • Because this program was developed in VB6 on an XP machine, a number of dlls on your W7 machine may be newer. This triggers a number of warnings during installation along the lines of "the existing dll is newer than the one being installed; do you want to keep the existing file.....". The answer to all these is "keep the newer file".
  • A number of other "errors" occassionally appear - you can choose to ignore these - I've seen no problems yet.
  • In general, this program has only three critical components - the Trajectory.exe itself, the Bullets2.mdb, and the JET data base engine - it is this last item that often is already on your machine and is a newer version than what is distributed with this install package. It is likely that it is only if your PC does not already have the Jet data base engine that the install will actually appear "clean".
• "Trajectory" will now appear in your Start-menu.
• Give it a spin.
• You may now remove your zip file and all the temporary files created in step 2 above.

Version 2.2 and 2.3 fix a few bugs associated with window placement.

Version 2.5 is 2.4 simply rebuilt on the Windows XP Pro platform.

Version 2.6 is a rebuild for Windows 7. In particular, the program creates a file to remember registered user information. In previous versions this file had a ".reg" suffix. Windows 7 now views all such files a registry files and limits access to such. This version changes the file to a ".txt" file to avoid Windows 7 issues.

Version 2.7 adds the drag curves for G7 ballistic coefficients (along with G2, G5, G6 and G8). Note: the data base has not yet been updated to save which BC variant is being specified. All data in the existing/included data base is G1 data.

V3.0 now comes with a new Bullets2.mdb that contains the drag function (BC variant) information. Bullets2.mdb should be used with V3.0 and greater. Bullets.mdb should be used with V2.7 and earlier.

Known Problems

• Version 2.4 (and earlier) were built and intended for W95/98 machines. These versions were known to not run properly on W2000 boxes. Version 2.5 (and later) are built on Windows XP. It is not known if these will run on older machines as well.
• Occasionally during installation Windows reports an error that reads:
  "C:\WINDOWS\System\msvcrt40.dll
  An access violation occurred while copying the file"
  This means that you already have the file on your system and it is currently in use by another application (perhaps the installation program itself). If you get this, simply click "Ignore" and the installation should continue and complete successfully.
• Windows 7 treats all files with the ".reg" suffix as registry files and controls access to these. Versions earlier than 2.6 used ".reg" as a registration file. This had to be changed to a ".txt" file to run under Windows 7.