Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: [Ethereal-dev] Re: [Ethereal-users] 0.10.4 error - no disk in drive

[Lars Roland <Lars.Roland@xxxxxxx>]

Kirk Hobart wrote:
> Thanks guys for the suggestions. I double-checked my environment, path, and
> "Open Recent" list. I see no "I:" anywhere.
>
> Today I discovered two clues:
>
> 1. The Ethereal error messages disappear if I use Windows Explorer to
> "Eject" the I: drive. That works even if there was no disc in the drive.
>
> 2. The error messages return if I simply insert a disc into I: and then
> eject it by pressing the eject button on its front panel.
>
> Hmmm! I wonder if Ethereal does some sort of drive scan upon startup.

I probably just discovered the reason for this strange behavior.
The Windows port of GTK2 comes with some dll's but also with a few 
configuration files which are plain text. Two of these files have 
references for files on drive I: . The two files are (relative location 
from the installation directory of ethereal):
/etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders
/etc/pango/pango.modules

You cannot start the GTK2 version of Ethereal without those files.
There are two workarounds:
- Use GTK1 version of Ethereal
- Replace all wrong paths in those two files with the correct one:
  (e.g. replace "I:\target" with "c:\program files\ethereal")

To the developers:
The installation directory of ethereal can be different.
So how can this be solved?
A post installation script to fix the two files?

Regards,

Lars