Running Informix on Windows Vista.
Running Informix on Windows Vista.

Windows Vista is indeed quite cool. However, when it comes to installing software, you might come into some problems as Vista is relying on a new security mechanism which requires to be Administrator when you add anything to Program Files (well, this is the short version).

When you need to install software on your Windows box, you really want to have all that in the Program Files directory. Windows understands this quite clearly when you want to use setup programs based MSIs (Microsoft Installers) or normal executables. When it comes to Java applications, such as IBM Informix JDBC installer, you should become Administrator prior to executing the application. You can’t right-click on a JAR file, so you really need to start a Command Prompt as Administrator.

To do so, click on the Start button, go to All Programs, Accessories. Right-click on Command Prompt, choose the second option “Run as administrator”, as illustrated in the following capture.

On Windows Vista, to install Informix JDBC, run as Administrator.
On Windows Vista, to install Informix JDBC, run as Administrator.

You will be prompt for confirmation. Click on Continue.

Once you are an administrator, look at the upper left corner of the command prompt: you should read “Administrator: Command Prompt”.

Running the Command Prompt as administrator.
Running the Command Prompt as administrator.

Go where you have your setup.jar (I have it in “C:\Users\Jean Georges\Desktop\iif.11.10.TB5TL.win2003\JDBC”). Run:

java -cp .\setup.jar

Follow the usual on screen instructions.

You can check that the installation went well by going to the “C:\Program Files\IBM\Informix_JDBC_Driver” directory, if you have not changed the default installation path.

Using another command prompt window:

cd "C:\Program Files\IBM\Informix_JDBC_Driver"
dir lib

You should get:

Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 1421-44CC
Directory of C:\Program Files\IBM\Informix_JDBC_Driver\lib

2007-04-16 14:53           .
2007-04-16 14:53           ..
2007-03-15 22:37   693,565 ifxjdbc.jar
2007-03-15 22:35    43,204 ifxjdbcx.jar
2007-03-15 22:35 1,580,263 ifxlang.jar
2007-03-15 22:35   306,261 ifxlsupp.jar
2007-03-15 22:35   779,404 ifxsqlj.jar
2007-03-15 22:35    46,566 ifxtools.jar

6 File(s) 3,449,263 bytes
2 Dir(s) 8,985,575,424 bytes free

I hope this is as useful for you as it is for me!