Run Garmin From Hard Drive

[ken]

Instructions to Run Garmin Mappsource From Hard Drive

a friend recently tried to get garmin mapsource to run without the disk - - - i installed it on my computer and had the same trouble (no options, only "d" drive) i tried the disk in my computers burner "e drive" and it wouldnt even work from there (only "d drive" and and no options to browse) - i cant figure out why anyone would design software that will only work from the "d drive" (what if you had 2 hard drives and your cd rom was your "e" drive???) - - - - - - anyway... i figured out how to do it - - if you have "garmin mapsource" and do not want to put in a cd everytime you use the program (or put more maps into your GPS) e-mail me ( [email protected] ) you have to copy & paste the disk to your hard drive and edit your registry - i took pictures of the computer screen with every step i did so the person could follow it - i will e-mail them to you if you want but make sure that you have more than 4MB of room in your mailbox.
Ken

 

[JOD]

no problem here

Ken,

I don't understand the problem.

I have Garmin MapSource; National Parks East TOPO, MetroGuide North America, and Americas BlueChart loaded on my computer. I have no problems running them. I don't have the CD in the coffee cup holder at all. Did you go through the installation the proper way? You shouldn't need to go through convoluted installs to get these to run.

Jim

 

[max]

I have 2 hard drives, C & D, and MapSource runs fine from my "E" drive.

 

[Frosty]

Ken,

I don't understand the problem.

I have Garmin MapSource; National Parks East TOPO, MetroGuide North America, and Americas BlueChart loaded on my computer. I have no problems running them. I don't have the CD in the coffee cup holder at all. Did you go through the installation the proper way? You shouldn't need to go through convoluted installs to get these to run.

Jim

My Canadian disks run from the hard drive, eh, but not the US set. I emailed Garmin and they said the US disks are older and not set up to run from hard drive. Also, you can't search for features like lakes, etc, from the US maps but you can from the Canadian ones

 

[Rick]

Yippee!!!
My Garmin Topo Runs only from my slow D Drive and not my faster read/write E drive. I had thought about re-addressing the drives, but figured the heck with it. I have also always wanted to load my Nat Geo Topos NE (all 10 CD's) onto my hard drive, to save from flipping through discs everytime.

Thanks Ken - I will PM with my email address.
Rick

 

[ken]

for those not having a problem - you are lucky (or maybe you have a program other than the topo) - this one will run on d drives only - this version is 3.02 upgraded from the website to the latest (version 6.3) with still no options for accessing the info from other drives - - - - with the instructions i am sending, if you only want to run one of the 3 disks from the hard drive you can (and run the rest from the cd rom) just dont modify the folders for those others - - - those that e-mailed me, i will wait and see how many more want it and send them all at once, later tonight if i have time (no time right now) - just make sure you have a pretty empty mailbox (4mb) since these are a bunch of photos with instructions (B&W jpeg photo files) - i will probably break them up into 2 or 3 e-mails so those with dial-up won't have to wait for one long download (you will have a few shorter downloads) - if you do not have win XP with the picture & fax viewer you can open the photos in "paint" - they are all numbered in sequence.

it is better to use my e-mail address (below) rather than a "PM" but i will check my "PMs" later.
if i forget you please e-mail me again ( [email protected])

 

[ken]

Yippee!!!
My Garmin Topo Runs only from my slow D Drive and not my faster read/write E drive. I had thought about re-addressing the drives, but figured the heck with it. I have also always wanted to load my Nat Geo Topos NE (all 10 CD's) onto my hard drive, to save from flipping through discs everytime.

the national geographic is easy to do on the hard drive - just drop each disk into the "TOPO_DATA" folder (C:/TOPO!/TPO_DATA) and "TOPO" will find it.

to use your garmin disks on the "e" instead if "d" is easy - follow the same instructions that i send you - except you will not be rewriting the whole address - you will just be changing the letter in the registry folder from "d" to "e"

 

[ken]

i just got an e-mail that this was moved (i was wondering why i couldn't find the original, so i posted again with the message below so everyone would know it should be in thier mailboxes) i have never even looked at this forum - - - - anyway, since i found it... i got a lot of requests for the instructions - i e-mailed 3 sets of 3 jpeg files for a total of 9 - if you did not get all 9 send me an e-mail - - - if you did not get any at all send me an e-mail ( [email protected] )

 

[CaptCaper]

How I did mine was to make a folder on C: drive (hard drive) copy contents of the Topo disk's you want into it. Then run the install from within the folder you made. The setup.exe will be in the setup disk #1 Western contents of course.

 

[ken]

How I did mine was to make a folder on C: drive (hard drive) copy contents of the Topo disk's you want into it. Then run the install from within the folder you made. The setup.exe will be in the setup disk #1 Western contents of course.

that's interesting - maybe that is what tells the registry where to look for the disks, from the drive that you installed it from, (d,e or in your case c) only problem is that if you install it from "d" and then change anything with your computer that would make your cd rom "e" you would have to remove and reinstall mapsource topo or edit the registry - - - - - - or if you install it from your hard drive (as you did) and only want the east on the hard drive and the west to run from the cd rom you still have to edit the registry (and remove some of the "west" disk that you had previously copied and pasted to the hard drive).

 

[CaptCaper]

Ken

I put Western,Eastern and Alaska and Hawaii in the folder before I ran setup.exe. I don't need a CD at all.

I don't know why they do this with Topo as I have Metro Guide,City Select and it allows the maps to be loaded to hard drive also so no disks are used.

Maybe Topo is an older program and that option was not included when Garmin made it or had it made for them.

Garmin did tell me long ago to do it that way. Also there is a forum link below that has good tips on that and more.

GPS Software forum HERE