General File Transfer Error -32 when installing Fontographer

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tariqm
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General File Transfer Error -32 when installing Fontographer

Post by tariqm »

I'm running XP x64 SP2. I used the IS3 engine to start installation of Macromedia Fontographer 4.1. But when the actual installation started. It failed with a General File Transfer Error -32 error that prevented installation from continuing. What system changes need to be made to install normally?
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sparcdr
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Re: General File Transfer Error -32 when installing Fontogra

Post by sparcdr »

This is likely caused by 32-bit installer incompatibility with WOW (Windows on Windows) and whatever version of the installer was shipped with Fontographer 4.1 at that time. Compatibility mode will likely not solve these issues from my experience. The only other option besides a virtual machine running XP SP2 (32-bit) would be to attempt to create a portable version and crack it which requires tracing registry activity for the installer process, extracting the keys, etc.

Since x64 doesn't have NTVDM due to long addressing mode, it may be trying to call things that it can't such as 16-bit thunks. This would also require an XP SP2 vm to achieve. The only saving grace is that Macromedia and Adobe titles from this era relied on serials alone so maybe it's doable. The general transfer error to me means that it is trying to write data but lacks the permission, as a limitation caused by the differences of WOW6432 and the 9x API's it tries to shim. Check the event viewer as a start, and consider trying Mark Russinovich / SysInternals tools from Microsoft such as procmon to watch what it's actually trying to do.

https://www.adobe.com/support/fontograp ... loads.html

This release was from ~1996 based on the Macromedia patch page for it. I have many problems with installers from that year on games for example when I try on 64-bit XP or newer.

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