Jeff Liebermann wrote in
:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:48:15 -0500, John Ferrell
wrote:

I prowled around the registry without anything looking interesting.
Upon examining the folder containing the tlw3.exe file I found a file
"TL.DEF" which I replaced from with the one from the working backup
machine and all is well!
I will now return to my matching studies...

Thanks for the help,
John Ferrell W8CCW

Nicely done. TL.DEF is created when you first run TLW. I assumed
wrongly that the settings were saved in the registry. It would have
been messy to fix if they were because uninstalling most programs
preserves the user settings in the registry. When you reinstall, the
problems just return.



I've found that most programs will set user and program settings directly
under a section names after the company, or the program itself, so a look at
the 'about' dialog usually shows a name or two that can be used to search for
in the registry. A look at whatever the search reveals will usually narrow it
down correctly unless the keys and values are named so cryptically that they
make no sense to anyone but the coder. Few try that hard to obfuscate, and
most tend to verbosity in commenting and readability so it's usually easy to
find a program's settings to remove a branch and renew it. Trial and other
license settings are usually much better hidden, but those won't affect
subleties of program operation unless features are limited by license types.

One thing worth doing is to back up the entire registry to a file before
testing a new program, then doing it again to a new file after first install
(and perhaps reboot if required). Comparing the two will show what if
anything it added. The time taken to do this is always less than that
consumed in solving problems related to not doing it.