EZ-Flash USA Forum

I know the answer to this seemingly common problem is out there, but wherever it is, it must have been buried, cause I couldn't find it for the life of me. I searched for hours, and all I kept finding was "delete the EZPAra.ini file and try again." Which didn't work for me. Ever. So I decided to tackle the problem on my own.

I started with the solution that saved many of my kid's computer games. I'm rockin a Dell Mini laptop with a weird static (unchangable) widescreen format. Anything that requires 800x600 screen resolution fails to work on my computer. Until I found Vmware's VMplayer.

Its just a virtual machine launcher that allows me to run a "virtual" computer similar to an emulator playing a rom. And its free. Only thing you need is an operating system installation cd (which should have come with your home computer). Download the vmplayer, run it, insert your operating system installation cd, create a new virtual machine using the operating system installation cd as the new vm (virtual machine) operating system, and then once the installation is finished, and you've run all the updates you can (mine had about 124 to install) you are ready. You don't need to install any special drivers for the hardware your computer might be packing, cause a virtual machine pretends to be a generic computer, and doesn't detect your "special" hardware, it just passes everything thru the non-vm operating system.

On your not-virtual computer (the operating system that's running vmplayer, to get to it, minimize the vm's window or press Crtl+Alt), you'll want to create a shared folder (for advice on network setup and file and folder sharing, you'll have to look elsewhere, but there's lots of easy to follow guides for that on the 'net, just search for it). This folder is going to act as your SD card*, in the vm operating system you'll navigate to the My Computer, and from Tools, you'll want to Map a Network Drive... pointed at that newly created shared folder on your non-vm operating system (please note, this step may not be entirely necessary, but when I tried to proceed by just using my card reader, the vmplayer crashed my computer, so I suggest doing this even if its not entirely necessary, the life you save may be your own).

After you got all that ready, and you can play around on the vm operating system (you may have to give it a minute, be patient, your computer is now running TWO operating systems, that's a lot of work, expect some slow-down). Launch your web browser and surf over to wherever you can grab the latest version of EZ4 Client. Unzip it to an easy to find location. If you haven't got anything else installed on the vm (and if you are following my guide verbatim, you shouldn't have anything) you can put it pretty much anywhere, even the desktop. If you don't put it on the desktop, I suggest making shortcut to it from the desktop, in case you forget where it is next time you load this vm.

Installed? Good. Launch that puppy. If you did what I said, you should be Looking at EZ4 Client's famous gibberish vs. English setup window. For some of you, this may be as far as you've ever gotten. Hope you brought extra socks, cause the one's you got are about to be blown off. Select English (I'm guessing you speak English, cause otherwise, why you reading this?), and click next (or OK, or whatever it says there that isn't cancel). Socks, officially blown as you should now be staring at the EZ4 Client proper. Click the Config button. Remember the network drive? Put that as your directory to send stuff to.

Now, assuming you got your file sharing and everything to work properly, all you need to do from this point on is drop ROMs and anything else you're sending to your miniSD in a shared folder on the non-vm system, run vmplayer, open ez4 client on the vm, open the roms and stuff from the shared folder with ez4 client, hit your send button after selecting the patches to be applied, close the vm, find the shared folder on the non-vm system, and copy everything in it over to your miniSD card using the simple cut'n'paste technique (those of you not familiar with the cut/copy and paste options always found under the Edit Menu of the Windows operating system should not touch computers, seriously, just walk away).

If this method doesn't work for you, tough luck. Figure it out your self.

This is pretty much what I do. I'm a linux user and couldn't get EZ4 Client running under WINE. So, I installed XP in VirtualBox, shared /media/ezflash (my MiniSD card mountpoint) with the guest OS and then mapped the share under XP. Does the job.