AdCruncher™ Proxy©

Installing AdCruncher™ Proxy is an extremely long and complicated process that consists of the following numerous steps:

Step 1:   Unzip the .zip files into the folder of your choice.

Step 2:   . . . um, . . . er, . . . well there is no step 2 actually.   :)

I've never developed a commercial product completely through from start to finish and am rather inexperienced at putting together any type of installation package, so I don't have one for this thing yet (I'm working on it, Jesse, I'm working on it!), so you'll just have to make do with simply unzipping the .zip file into a folder of your choice.

Whenever I get the installation program written, I'll update this portion of the documentation with details on its use. (It should be pretty much a standard "InstallShield" type of installation program, but like I said, once I finish putting it together, I'll let you know how to use it.)

Please note that the MFC .dll files that come with the installation package may or may not be needed. The program needs them, but you may already have them on your system somewhere. (This is one of those things that the installation program normally takes care of -- and will take care of once I write it).

If you don't already have them on your system however (they usually live in your Windows system directory) then you'll need the ones that come with AdCruncher. (You shouldn't have to copy them anywhere though. They can stay in the same directory along with AdCruncher.)

Uninstalling AdCruncher™ Proxy is an extremely long and complicated process that consists of the following numerous steps:

Step 1:   Uninstall the Transparent Proxying feature if it's installed.  (Important! See further below!)

Step 2:   Delete the folder (and thus all the files) containing AdCruncher.

That's it! No rebooting. No running any uninstallation program. Nothing. Just delete the files and you're done. It's that simple.

To install the Transparent Proxying feature, all you need to do is run the Transparent Proxying Installation Utility (called "fish.exe") that should reside in the Transparent Proxying folder along with the rest of the transparent proxying files.

Note: The "sporder.dll" file -- also included in the package -- must always be in the same directory as the "fish.exe" program! Running the "fish.exe" program without the corresponding "sporder.dll" file will cause the program to fail!

When you run this "fish.exe" program, you'll see before you an "Install/Uninstall Transparent Proxying" dialog box (like the one below) with an 'Install', 'Uninstall' and 'Exit' button. A status message should already be displayed indicating the current installation status of the feature (which should say "Not installed" because we haven't installed it yet).

Enter the IP Address and Port number of the workstation that you will be running your transparent AdCruncher™ Proxy on (usually 127.0.0.1, i.e. "localhost") and then click the 'Install' button. You should then see some progress messages be displayed in the "Results" area of the dialog box as the installation proceeds. Once the program finishes with the installation, you should see the status message should changed to "installed." Click 'Exit' to exit the program and you're done (except for installing AdCruncher™ Proxy itself of course).

Next, start AdCruncher™ Proxy and define a proxy at the same IP Address and Port number as you used above with the transparent proxying option enabled. (See the discussion of the "Enable transparent proxying" option in the "Options tab... " section of the "Configuration" page for information.)

That's it!   You're done!

From now on, all browser requests will auto-magically be routed to AdCruncher™ Proxy! There's absolutely no need to configure your browser to go through a proxy at all! You still can, of course, but with the transparent proxying feature installed, you don't need to!

To summarize:

Step 1:   Run the provided "fish.exe" install program choosing an IP Address and Port number.

Step 2:   Start AdCruncher™ and define a transparent proxy at the same IP Address and Port number.

Pretty complicated, huh?  ;-)

If, for some strange reason, you ever want to uninstall the Transparent Proxying feature (why you would want to do that I don't know; it's such a cool feature), you need to be sure and follow the below instructions very closely:

Step 1:   Run the "fish.exe" utility and click the 'Uninstall' button.

(now here comes the tricky part....)

Step 2:   Reboot!  :)

Seriously. That's the most important part of the uninstallation procedure: rebooting after running the uninstallation program (although the installation program should automatically do that for you).

Once you've uninstalled the feature and you've rebooted your system, then your web browser and other internet programs should once again begin accessing the web on their own without the need of AdCruncher™ Proxy.

(Of course even without the transparent proxying feature installed, you still have the option of manually configuring your browser to use AdCruncher™. That doesn't change. That option is always available to you.)

With the latest version of AdCruncher™ Proxy's Transparent Proxying feature, you now have the option of being able to transparently route any/all of your local network's workstations through a single instance of AdCruncher™ Proxy, without the need of having to run AdCruncher™ Proxy of each and every workstation.

To accomplish this, simply install AdCruncher™ Proxy on your "server" workstation (the one with access to the Internet) and then install only the Transparent Proxying feature on all of your other workstations (i.e. the "clients").

Just make sure that when you install the Transparent Proxying facility on your various client workstations, that you specify the correct IP Address and Port number of the server workstation that's running AdCruncher™ Proxy.

You can even run multiple AdCruncher™ Proxy servers if you want, and have some of your client workstations go through one and others go through the other. Your choice!