Forums @ Yugma.com

The "client.properties" error comes from a rare bug in Vista where an important Registry setting is set incorrectly by default. This entry must be fixed manually before Yugma can work.

Please note that making changes to the Windows Registry can cause major damage to your Windows installation if done incorrectly - it is highly recommended to have a professional perform this change or have someone from our technical support staff walk you through it.

If you have any doubt whatsoever about any step in this procedure, do not proceed! Ask someone for help! Yugma Support Staff members have tested and used this procedure multiple times and successfully fixed this issue. Nevertheless, Yugma cannot be held responsible for any consequences if the procedure fails.

Here are the instructions:

To open the Registry Editor, hold the Windows flag key (between CTRL and ALT) and R at the same time to open the RUN window, then type:

Code: Select all

regedit

to open the Registry Editor. You may get a security question asking you to authorize this program.
On the left side, click on the appropriate plus signs to open the following path:

Code: Select all

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

Then click on Shell Folders on the left to see its content on the right.
Take a look at the entry "Desktop" on the right. This entry is used by Java and Yugma to determine the location of your user folder and the client.properties file - if this entry is set incorrectly (which we have seen quite a few times on Vista lately), Yugma cannot run. Please note that Yugma does not actually use the Desktop folder - it only uses it as a reference to find the folder it needs.

Under normal circumstances (meaning not inside a corporate server environment) the entry should read something like:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\(your Windows user name)\Desktop

We have seen various bad variations of this (most of them don't even exist as a real path).

To find out what this path really should be:
Open the RUN window again by pressing Windows key and R. This time type:

Code: Select all

cmd

and press OK. This should open a black window.
In the black window, type:

Code: Select all

echo %userprofile%

and press ENTER.
This is the path to your current user profile, usually something like "C:\Users\(your Windows user name)".

Basically, the Desktop registry key needs to be this last value with "\Desktop" added to it (no last back slash), e.g.:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop

Before making any changes to the registry, we strongly recommend making a backup first.
On the left side in the Registry Editor, right-click on Shell Folders, then choose EXPORT. Save the file somewhere where you will be able to find it in case something should go wrong, and name it something like "YugmaFixBackup" or something else you will be able to remember later.
Now on the right side, double-click Desktop to edit its content.
Now change the content, using the result in the black window as source, adding "\Desktop" to it (without quotation marks).
Usually, the path should run something like this:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop

(with "Owner" being replaced by your user name).

If you are inside a corporate network with a server hosting your user profile, please ask your local network or IT administrator for help. Yugma only works if this path is a local path.

If you have any doubt on what to enter here, DO NOT DO IT - ask a professional for help.
Making the wrong change in the Registry can cause your Windows to malfunction!

If you have entered the correct information, press OK, then close the Registry Editor, and close the black text window.
If all went well, Yugma should work immediately.

I have Vista 64-bit, and am receiving this error. My registry is set up correctly, but not quite like you have specified. My Documents, Desktop, Videos, Pictures, and Music folders are all stored on my D: drive (D:\Users\(User Name)\Desktop, etc), while the rest of the profile information is stored on the C: drive (C:\Users\(User Name)\AppData, etc). I have been running this way on both XP and Vista for several years, and have never had it be a problem with any software until this. In fact, in Vista you can change where the desktop is stored by simply dragging the folder Desktop -> (User Name) -> Desktop in the Explorer folder tree to another location, and it automatically updates these locations in the registry. Occasionally I will find some little utilities or other simple programs that installs a shortcut to a desktop folder under my %userprofile% folder rather than looking up the correct location in the registry, but that's the only problem I've had. Besides copying my desktop back to my C: drive, what other options do I have to get Yugma to work for me?

Also as a side note, when you do a search for the error "Application cannot run without client.properties file" in the forum, you get:

"The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: application cannot client file properties run without.
You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards."

As such, it is very difficult to find this fix.

Hi, relytor, and welcome to the forum!

The reason you are still seeing the error is most likely because only parts of your profile are stored on D: - the new security features of Vista do not allow a Java applet to access the user profile folder like in XP.

While on XP the Yugma website can access all files directly inside the user folder, on Vista we are restricted to the folder \AppData\LocalLow\ inside the user folder.

I think your best bet would be to move the rest of your user profile to drive D:.
I did that for a test installation of Vista, and I used instructions from this site:
http://joshmouch.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/change-user-profile-folder-location-in-vista/

Once Vista knows to search for the LocalLow folder on drive D:, and once you moved the folder and its content to drive D:, Yugma should work. Also, other programs will then know where to find %userprofile%.

As for the forum search: Thanks for pointing it out - it should be fixed now.

Richard -

Thank you for your prompt reply. Note that I was able to fix this issue by simply copying the C:\Users\(User Name)\AppData\LocalLow\Yugma folder to D:\Users\(User Name)\AppData\LocalLow\Yugma. Note that your install program detects these locations correctly, as it installed the client.properties file to the correct location on my C: drive and the Yugma icon to the correct Desktop folder on my D: drive. The actual program itself is not detecting these correctly. My %userprofile% directory, where the AppData folder is supposed to reside, is pointing to my C:\ drive, but when I run Yugma, it still attempts to look for it on my D: drive where my Desktop is. This really is a bug and not a problem with my configuration, so you may want to pass it on to the developers. All the rest of the Windows apps I've ever run correctly identifies my Desktop and Documents on my D: drive, and my AppData and other profile information to be on my C: drive.

Just a note on my setup for any interested: If I want to re-install Windows for whatever reason, I simply need to format my C: drive. There is nothing on that drive that I need to backup, as all my documents, pictures, videos, music, etc is all on my D: drive. The C: drive also has very little information written to it, so I only need to defragment it whenever I install/uninstall a program and it stays that way. From past experience, moving my entire profile to another drive causes problems once you re-install Windows. First, Windows will see that a profile directory with that name already exists, so creates a new one and ignores the old one. Once you fix it to point to your old one (which is quite a bit of work, as the link you posted attests to), then when you re-install your programs they often have problems with the pre-existing AppData. So, I've found the easiest and most stable configuration is to keep the profile on my C: drive, but keep my Desktop, Documents, Music, etc. on my D: drive.

I am very much aware of the advantages of storing your personal files on a different partition or drive, especially after working in tech support for over 10 years - I used to have partitions ranging from C: to H: myself
But I never redirected the My Documents folder - I simply manually stored my data on drive E:

Back on topic:
Changing your Documents paths the way you did may have been added to Vista as a workaround to make it easy to move parts of the user folder, but it does not move the entire profile to a different drive, and this is very likely to confuse some other programs as well. When moving the folder to a different drive, I recommend moving the entire user profile folder over as well and changing all the necessary registry keys manually (after making backups, of course, and by first COPYING all files and renaming the original folder for safety purposes until you are certain that everything works - not recommendable for Windows beginners!) - I don't remember how I did it on my Vista, but I found various pages on Google about this. Here is what I believe I used:

http://joshmouch.wordpress.com/2007/04/ ... -in-vista/

Also, I should add that in my tests of changing the registry key for Desktop as described in the fix above, I never had any negative effect if the key was changed, even to a non-existing location (except for Java and Yugma which both rely on this key to be correct) - in fact, since we keep encountering this issue so often (today I had a customer whose Registry "thought" that the Desktop folder was inside the Favorites folder!!!), I am certain that this registry key is not actually used by Vista for anything other than a background variable available for use by other programs. Since this issue occurs so often and Vista still seems to run, I am fairly certain that changing this key will not have any negative effects (but just in case it does, that is why I added the instructions to create a backup first).

About our installer using drive C: to create the file:
Our installer appears to use %userprofile% to detect the LocalLow folder and writes the client.properties file there, but Java (and thus the Yugma program) do not use the %userprofile% variable to detect the user profile location, but the registry key mentioned in the fix above. So the installer writes the file to C: while the program expects it on D: because you moved the Desktop folder to D:.

I will pass this information on to our development team - maybe there is a way to work around this, either by setting our installer to also use the Desktop registry key to find the folder (in which case we may have a problem with Vista not allowing another program to create the LocalLow folder) or something like that.

In the meantime I can only recommend for your case to either use the instructions in the link I included here to move the entire profiles folder over to drive D: (which in my opinion would be the cleanest way of handling this), or by setting the Desktop variable in the Registry back to drive C: (I just tested it myself with a similar setup to yours, and even if the Desktop setting is set to a non-existing folder in the Registry, on a reboot the user Desktop still showed normally from the other folder).

Hi, I heard of yugma and went straight to the pro version, even before trying it: no time to waiste.

But when I tried to install on vista 64 bits, with my user profile on a different drive, I received this client.properties file error.

This configuration is not rare, and I quite sure it never works. I have seen on other blogs other user having this problem for months, without correction made from yugma. It cannot be so rare, as when you start googling yugma and a space, google suggest "yugma client.properties file" automatically.

It is really important that a professional collaboration tool is able to support frequent configuration. I cannot imagin explaining the above procedure "from time to time" to the people i work with, of helping them to modify their registry...

Since even even this thread is months old, no solution will be provided apparently. Well, I will need to cancel my subscription and moove on with another tool: no time to waiste.

Here's a quick solution to correct the client.properties error:

go to the file LaunchExtractor in the C:\users\%UserName%\Yugma\4.1\ directory
right click on the file and go to properties
select the compatibility tab
Click the check bos for "Run this program in compatibility mode for:"
in the drop down box, choose Windows XP (Service pack 2)
Click OK

That should resolve the issue. This fix works for Vista x86, Vista x64, Windows 7 x86, and Windows 7 x64