Installing the Checkpoint Architecture on Win32

Author: Will Dickson, CCS

Version: 1.3.1

Date: 31 June 2007

Summary

This document describes how to install or upgrade Checkpoint, or any application based on the Checkpoint Architecture, onto a Win32/x86 host. NB. the rest of this document refers to "Checkpoint"; if you're installing another application based on the Checkpoint Architecture, substitute accordingly.

This document should be sufficient to install Checkpoint, and (hopefully) to allow you to troubleshoot configuration problems which are severe enough to prevent Checkpoint from running. Once you're up and running, you should be able to access the Checkpoint user guide. This will give you further information about running Checkpoint and administering your Checkpoint installation.

This document is part of the Checkpoint user guide. It isn't linked into the navigation for that guide (and doesn't follow its document naming convention) so that it can be available at install time, which is when it's primarily needed. The rest of the Checkpoint documentation is available after you've installed Checkpoint.

Quick start

The Windows distributions of Checkpoint / Checkpoint Commander now come as self-contained, executable installers which work in the usual way.

For Checkpoint or Checkpoint Commander (non-GPL versions only), make sure you have a licence key. You should have been given this when you obtained Checkpoint or Checkpoint Commander. Please note that the licence key is locked to the Licence Holder name and Organisation name specified.
Run the installer.
Configure Checkpoint. (Fresh Checkpoint installs only. If you have only installed Checkpoint Commander, or you're upgrading an existing Checkpoint installation, skip this step.) At the end of the install process, the installer will give you the option to launch "Checkpoint (Command Centre)" or "Checkpoint Commander". Choose Checkpoint (Command Centre). You will be guided through the configuration procedure.
Run your application. All Checkpoint-architecture apps are started by standard EXE files (Windows applications), which are in the bin subfolder of the Checkpoint home folder. Simply launch the app in whichever way you prefer. Unless you tell it otherwise, the installer will put icons for Checkpoint Commander (and Checkpoint Command Centre, in the case of full Checkpoint installs) onto your desktop. Many Checkpoint applications are installed, launched and controlled via the Checkpoint Command Centre - cpcc.exe, if you don't have the desktop icon. For more information about how to run Windows apps, there are a number of guides on Windows basics available.

If Checkpoint seems to have frozen

Not all of the action takes place within the focussed window (often, this is your browser). Sometimes it happens that another dialog box surfaces behind the focussed window, so that you can't see it. This is annoying, but it seems to be some kind of timing issue and there's nothing we can do about it - sorry. (These dialogs aren't all that common, though.) So it can happen that Checkpoint seems to have frozen up, whereas the real problem is that it's waiting for you to interact with it, via a dialog box you can't see. If you get this, use the Alt+Tab key combination to look for a Java "coffee-cup" icon on your application list. If you see one, it may well be one of these dialogs.

Server operation (advanced users)

We do not recommend using Windows machines as servers, and cannot provide support for this. If you want to do this anyway, you should read the section on "Service applications" in the Checkpoint User guide.