Ghost model author

[Ian Mitchell]

I've just noticed that in one one of my stand-alone, no-security EAPX (15.2) repositories, there is a strange default author for all new elements.
Worse still, it's not me.
Even worse, it's the name of a customer of mine who maybe once sent me some EA content, a long time ago.
I have looked in:
- Configure / Reference Data / Model type / People and that is empty
- t_authors is also empty (nt sure this this is the same data)
There is no security, so no users defined.
The 'Authors' dropdown does sometime have two people, and one of them is me, which is nice, but I'm not the default :-(
And sometimes, I'm not even in the drop-down - just the ghost user.

I just tried this with a 100% empty, brand-new EAPX repository, and the first EA element I created was authored by him.
And I'm nowhere the in the drop-down of authors.
Where is this ghost author stored ?

[qwerty]

In some former EA the settings had a default user. I have not the faintest idea where they stowed that in my current 13.5 (nor any later EA). Settings in EA: another nightmare.

q.

P.S. In V10 it was in Tools/Options/General

[qwerty]

Found it in the Registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sparx Systems\EA400\EA\OPTIONS\AUTHOR

q.

[Ian Mitchell]

GENIUS - works perfectly - Thanks Q.
I wonder how it got there in first place?

@Sparx - when does EA set this reg entry? It must do that, as this is a 1 month old system, which my 'ghost' user has never seen.

[Geert Bellekens]

That's what you get if you live in a centuries old house on on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere  Ghosts!

Geert

[Uffe]

Hi Ian,


Out of curiosity, was this ghost user name taken from your system, or was it some kind of default name?
If the latter, what was it?

And if the former, was it an account name, or a full name, or some other Windows account property?


/Uffe

[Ian Mitchell]

@Uffe
 I have no idea how the name got into the repository of a brand new computer. I have opened models in which the ghost author is correctly present, but I don't see how that name could get into the EA registry entries. Hence my question to @Sparx.
The registry entry which was so keenly spotted by Q was just a plain text string, of the full name of the author as it appeared in the author drop-down.

I wonder if it's possible to set a 'default author' somewhere in EA, and only the repositories which contain that author happen to set that property? And once set, all new reps get it. No link to a windows account - brand new computer.

[qwerty]

Since it's in the registry, Windoze will likely have taken care from some central storage. Windoze is (black) magic.

q.

[Uffe]

Hello again,

@Uffe
 I have no idea how the name got into the repository of a brand new computer. I have opened models in which the ghost author is correctly present, but I don't see how that name could get into the EA registry entries. Hence my question to @Sparx.
The registry entry which was so keenly spotted by Q was just a plain text string, of the full name of the author as it appeared in the author drop-down.

I wonder if it's possible to set a 'default author' somewhere in EA, and only the repositories which contain that author happen to set that property? And once set, all new reps get it. No link to a windows account - brand new computer.

Well, even on a brand new Windows installation there is at least one account. Not a domain account, but a local one. (Actually there are about half a dozen accounts on a fresh install, but only one whose name is set during installation.)

In addition to the accounts, the Windows installation also keeps registration information under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, values RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization. So if the default author is set by the installer, it could use these values, possibly as a fallback in some situation.

Are you using the Sparx installer, or is the installation repackaged locally? That's a big piece of the puzzle.

/U

[Ian Mitchell]

EA was installed under my account, using the Sparx MSI installer. So no way the ghost name came from that source.
Remember this all went into a new computer, with no content on it at all until I started installing stuff.