After a few weeks of using BIAB 2020 I decided to look at Real Band, provided with BIAB 2020 PlusPak.
When starting up the program it asks for the pathes to

- Band in a Box
- Real Tracks
- Real Drums

I am running from the external hard Drive supplied with BIAB 2020 (H: on my pc). When I supply the following paths:


- BIAB is at H:\bb
- Real Tracks is at H:\bb\RealTracks
- Real Drums is at H:\bb\Drums


the installation programme gives the following message :

"Your Band-in-a-Box folder appears not to be a valid BB install.
If you quit now, Real Band will not be able to generate songs.
Are you sure you want to exit this dialog"

Can anyone suggest a solution to this problem, since my BIAB is definitely a registered, valid install?
Many thanks

Are you positive that your BiaB is on the external drive? Many, if not most, run BiaB from our C drive and have our RTs and RDs on another drive.

2 possible scenarios jump to mind
Do you have a C:\bb folder?
Is it from the 2020 install or maybe a previous version?

Has the license been activated?
(you mentioned a few weeks, which is what the program allows before requiring activation)

Yes BIAB runs on the external hard drive on which it was delivered, definitely not from the c: drive

No C:\bb folder
No previous install on this machine
Yes, the licence has been activated

You may need to do the minimal install so RB finds what it needs.
If you install BiaB to C: (it can be a minimal install taking little space), maybe that will work
(then point RB to the C:\bb folder for BiaB)

The message says the 'install' is not valid. Maybe you need to 'install' it somewhere. (?)

Hello Ray,

In your H:\bb folder, do you have the file bbw.exe?
In the H:\bb\Data folder, do you have the files "default.sol" and "rtextra.bin"?

Hi Andrew and thanks for replying. "Yes" to both questions

In your H:\bb folder, do you have the file bbw.exe?
In the H:\bb\Data folder, do you have the files "default.sol" and "rtextra.bin"?

One more thing, do you have the file H:\bb\Styles\ZZJAZZ.sty.

Could you attach a screenshot that shows the message happening in RealBand? Maybe we will notice something unusual.
Note: you can use the "File Manager" to attach an image file when you reply to a post.

Hi Andrew
Had some health problems so sorry for the delay in replying.

Yes -ZZJAZZ.STY is present see screenshot. I also enclose a screenshot of the warning message that you asked for, plus one showing where I instruct Realband to find the various files, which then generates the warning message. Finally there is sceen capture of the TicketsActivated subdirectory of RealBand

Real Band is installed on my C: drive at c:\Realband. I'm beginning to think that the next step is to uninstall RealBand from C: and start over. Are there any files I should retain from the current install (such as the TicketsActivated subdirectory, or will a new install create all the necessary files from scratch?

Many thanks for your help
Ray

Have you activated BiaB on H: ? (in H:\bb\ticketsActivated?)

Yes BiaB is activated on H:

Most of us who have run BiaB/RB successfully for a long time use C:\bb as the location as shown in my image below. May be worth trying. (ignore the Realtracks and Realdrums locations in this image, they could just as well be your external drive, I just happen to have copied them to an internal drive for faster drive access). The point is, most of us use the C:\ location for BB.

Try installing BiaB to C: using the minimum install options.
It will take little disk space (and time) to try it.

Maybe RB needs something in the system registry that an actual install would create.
If it doesn't work at first, make sure RB is looking to the new BiaB location on C:

If it works, it is up to you whether you want to run it that way or not, but it will help eliminate one possible cause.

Just an idea, you can always remove it if it doesn't work, or you don't want it running there.
It's the one thing I see that differs from my set up (and many others) compared to yours.

Just noticed; your very last image in the RB images you posted shows RB activation for 2015.
You are having problems with 2020 according to your first post.

You may need to start over.
Are you trying to run RB 2015 against a 2020 BB version?
Could that be the issue?

See copy of your posted image below

Interesting ! I didn't even have this notebook in 2015 so I'm astounded that a 2015 ticket shows.....

I'll uninstall RB and reinstall from the 2020 External hard drive to see if that solves the problem

Well, the big guns did the job.

- I've de-activated BiaB from my laptop.
- Renamed and put in a safe place various c:\bb directories, subdirectories and files
- deinstalled any trace of RealBand from the C Drive
- run a total reinstall of BiaB on my hard drive partition D:, and reactivated it
- spent 2 hours resetting various BiaB personal parameters via the preferences menu
- migrateed my songs and 800 jazz standards from the external H: drive to the D: partition. I will now back these songs up on the external H: drive once a week. This will free up space on my external drive hub so I can add a DVD reader/burner to it.
- startup up RealBand from the D: partition
- successfully activated it !

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and help
Ray

Please edit your post and in the Topic section add [Resolved] to the end of it.
That'll help other users find the solution you've provided, if other users encounter this problem.