If you are in North America, you need to pay for an account with Schedules Direct before you install FreeGuide. Click the "Sign-Up" link on their web site to get started. Make a note of the username and password you choose as you will need to enter them during FreeGuide's first-time wizard. NOTE: When you start FreeGuide you should enter your password despite the warning.
If anyone knows about a free North American listings provider, please let us know.
Before you do anything else, you will need the Java 2 Runtime Environment version 1.4 or above: You can check this by typing java -version in a DOS or Cmd window. Ask on the FreeGuide Users' mailing list (see the Contact page) if you have trouble installing Java.
Now, to get FreeGuide, go to the sourceforge
download page and pick the file like this:
"freeguide-x.x.x-with-xmltv-win32.exe
" with the highest
version number to get the windows installer.
NOTE: you almost certainly want the "with-xmltv" version, unless you know you don't need XMLTV.
The only thing you need to do after downloading the file is
double-clicking on the .exe
file and following the
installation instructions. After the installation, you will find a
FreeGuide icon in your start menu.
As soon as it's installed, FreeGuide should be ready to go, unless you are behind a firewall or proxy server.
If you have a proxy server or are behind a firewall, you will need to follow the instructions below to allow FreeGuide to see past them to the Internet.
NOTE: most home users will not need to do this - you are ready to start FreeGuide! Go straight to the User Guide.
In the following replace "example.com
" with
your proxy server address, and "8080
" with
the port it uses. On Windows you can find these out from the
" " menu on Internet Explorer by choosing
" ", going to the
" " tab and clicking
" ":
Right Click "My Computer" ->
Choose the
Tab and click the
button at the bottom
middle of the window. Click the " "
button in the Global Variables section.
Variable Name: http_proxy
Variable Value:
http://example.com:8080 Click
Click
In order to make channel icons download ok, you will need to add some stuff to the shortcut you use to launch FreeGuide. Right-click on the shortcut and choose Properties.
Now change the command to read like this:
javaw.exe -DproxySet=true -DproxyHost=example.com -DproxyPort=8080 -jar "C:\Program Files\FreeGuide\startup.jar" --doc_directory "C:\Program Files\FreeGuide\doc" --install_directory "C:\Program Files\FreeGuide\"