Installation for Windows

Installing Finale is usually easy and automatic, accomplished by following the directions displayed during the installation process. However, if you do have trouble installing, use the following procedure to resolve the most common installation problems.

Before you begin installing Finale, make sure there’s enough room on your hard disk to hold the program and its associated files. For a full installation, you’ll need about two hundred megabytes (200,000K) of free space on your hard disk. An additional 1.6GB is required for all the Garritan sounds. You should also bear in mind that, like many other software programs, Finale creates and makes use of “temporary files” during its normal operations, which it then deletes from your hard disk when you exit the program. We recommend having an additional ten megabytes (10,000K) of free disk space for these files.

Because some virus detection programs can prevent certain files from installing properly, we recommend you temporarily disable anti-virus programs. Rest assured, your Finale CD does not contain any viruses. If you are installing on Windows XP Professional, Vista, or 7, make sure you are logged in as the System Administrator and reboot after installation.

The Installer sets up a folder called “Finale 2012” for the Finale program and its associated files and folders. Do not alter this setup.

1. Insert the Install disc into your CD/DVD drive.
2. If the Setup Program doesn’t start, click the Start menu and choose Run.
3. Type d:\setup (where D represents the CD/DVD drive on your machine) and click OK. The Finale Setup program starts the installation process.
4. Follow the instructions on the screen until the installation is complete. The Finale Installer lets you select which files you want installed and where you want them placed on your hard disk. The Installer offers to create a folder called “Finale 2012”. We recommend that you install all of the Finale files into this new folder. For the most part, you can press Enter to confirm each screen’s defaults.

If upon trying to install, you get the error message: “Cannot find the file,” your CD/DVD drive may be assigned to a letter other than D. Look in “My Computer” to find out which letter is associated with your CD or DVD drive.

5. Remove the Installer disc from the drive and store it in a safe place! If anything happens to your hard disk, you can reinstall Finale from your original disc.

When you open any older Finale family notation file (from the File menu, choose Open, then navigate to your older file), Finale 2012 takes a moment to convert it into the new format, then opens it as an “Untitled” file. If you save the file in Finale 2012 using the same name as before, you will not be able to reopen that file using an earlier version of Finale. It is suggested, therefore, that you save the file with a slightly different name (for instance, “My Score” could become “My Score 2”), unless you are absolutely sure that you won’t need to reopen it in an earlier version of Finale.

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