Structural Material Manager makes use of software known as "lock drivers." The drivers are comprised of software that coordinates the interaction between Structural Material Manager's security lock and the Windows operating system.
A common misconception is that a lock driver is a hardware device. For instance, customers will sometimes mention that "the lock driver has been installed on the back of the computer." Actually, the lock is the physical security device, i.e., hardware, whereas the lock driver is the software that provides Windows operating system support for the lock.
There are several styles of security locks, and they are differentiated by their color and the type of port to which they attach. Parallel-port locks are either black or off-white. USB locks are either completely purple or they are mainly black with purple accent stripes.
If you have a white parallel-port lock or any type of USB lock, and Structural Material Manager is not recognizing the presence of the lock, the latest drivers should be downloaded from this Web site using the the directions in this document. If your lock is a black parallel-port unit, please click the "Structural Material Manager Software Downloads page" link at the bottom of this page, and look for information on the black lock.
Important: The driver software must be loaded before connecting a USB lock. When using the off-white, parallel port style of lock, it is of no consequence whether the lock is installed before or after the software, but this is not the case with the USB lock. Accordingly, if you have a USB style of security lock, disconnect it from the computer at this time. If it is already disconnected, do not connect it until the driver has been installed.
Once you have verified that no USB locks are attached to your PC, it is time to download and run the Rainbow.Exe file as follows:
A) You can download Rainbow.Exe either from our FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server or our HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) server. If your particular system has trouble obtaining the file from one server, simply try the other. Click on the link of your choice below:
B) Clicking the desired link above should have caused the "Save As" dialog to open. However, it is possible that rather than opening the Save As dialog, your browser instead asked whether you want to run the file or save it to disk. If this sort of question appears, choose to save the file to disk. Upon choosing this option, the desired Save As dialog should appear.
C) We'll assume that you now have the Save As dialog open. Before actually saving the file, pay careful attention to the following:
After noting the above items, and changing them if desired, click or press whatever button (usually "Save") your browser requires to begin saving the file.
D) Once the download is complete, close the Save As dialog (if it did not close automatically), and exit the browser. The Internet phase of the process is now complete.
Once you have successfully downloaded the file, the lock drivers can be installed as follows:
A) Under Windows 95, 98 and Millennium Edition, the drivers can be installed without the user having any special access rights. Under Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP and Vista, however, installation of any driver requires administrative privileges from a network security standpoint. So, please make sure that you have administrative privileges before proceeding if you are using Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP or Vista.
B) If you saved the file to the Windows Desktop, simply find the Rainbow icon there, and double-click it. If you saved Rainbow.Exe to some other location, you'll of course have to first browse to that location before double-clicking the Rainbow icon.
C) The Sentinel Protection Installer will now be launched. Just follow the on-screen prompts until installation is finished. You won't have to worry about selecting very many specific options in this program, as the defaults will usually be the correct choices. Thus, just click Next or Ok to move trough the setup screens as options are presented. For instance, if upgrading over a previously-installed driver version is the appropriate course of action, the "Upgrade" option is what you should choose, but that will most likely be the default anyway. Similarly, the "Complete" option should typically be chosen rather than "Repair / Modify," but once again that is probably going to be the default option. If your PC has a Windows Firewall running, the installer will ask if it may modify the firewall settings, and it is very important that you allow it to do so. If you are presented with a license agreement, choose the "Accept" option. At some point you'll be able to click he "Install" button to finish the installation. Note that it may be necessary to re-start your PC at one or more points during the installation; do so as directed by the setup program.
D) Once the lock driver software has been installed, it is finally safe to connect the USB style of security lock. If your lock is the parallel-port type, it does not matter whether you connect the lock before or after the drivers are installed, but it is indeed critical that USB locks are not connected until now. So, if you do have the USB style of lock, connect it at this time to any free USB port. Once the USB lock is connected, the presence of the lock driver software you already installed will allow Windows to automatically identify and activate the lock.
E) After the updated drivers have been installed, run Structural Material Manager. If you can successfully open a job by clicking File | Open, the lock is being properly detected.
Let's close this section by presenting some information concerning the need of lock drivers on networked machines. In a network environment in which Structural Material Manager is loaded on a server, the server itself only needs lock drivers installed if someone is actually going to run Structural Material Manager at that station. If the machine is simply acting as a the central point from which other network PC's access Structural Material Manager, and no user will actually sit at the server and run the software, then there is no need to load lock drivers on that machine. The basic rule-of-thumb is simple: if you physically installed a lock on the machine, load the drivers; if no lock will be attached to this computer, skip the lock driver installation.
Structural Material Manager Software Downloads page
Copyright © 2008
E.J.E. Industries, Inc.
P.O. Box 268
Washington, PA 15301
Ph: (724) 228-8841 Fax: (724) 228-7668