Affects systems
Installation of Bradstone Garden & Driveway Designer 2005 and/or Bradstone Patio Planner 2005 software on any of Windows 2000, Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP Home or Windows XP Pro systems.

Symptoms
You receive multiple "System files are out of date" error messages when you install Garden & Driveway Designer 2005, or Patio Planner 2005 on a Windows 2000, Windows server 2003 or Windows XP system (pro or home). The messages take the form shown below

Setup cannot continue because some system files are out of date on your system. Click OK if you would like setup to update these files for you know. You will need to restart Windows before you run setup again. Click cancel to exit setup without updating system files.

If you click OK to update the files and to restart windows, you receive the same error message when you run setup.exe to complete the installation.
 
References
Please refer to Microsoft knowledge base article 831491, and 222193 for a detailed description of this Microsoft problem.
 
Cause
In the Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows server 2003 operating systems, Microsoft built in a feature called the Windows File Protection system. Designed to prevent the malicious installation and overwriting of key system files, the Microsoft File Protection System only allows Microsoft service packs and patches to overwrite key system files, and prevents applications such as the Garden & Driveway Designer 2005, and Patio Planner 2005 software from performing the same task, even when it is legitimately required, due to out of date files existing on the target PC.
 
Resolution on XP systems
In the case of a target system running Microsoft XP, before installing the Bradstone Garden & Driveway Designer 2005 and the Bradstone Patio Planner 2005 software, the user should apply all current service packs (at the time of writing Service pack 2) and patches to XP - using the free Microsoft update service (http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/). Installing the Bradstone software after this step will usually resolve the problem. The reader should note that running a system which is not correctly service packed and patched, is not recommended by Microsoft, nor by TRGS engineering staff.
 
Resolution on non XP systems
In the case of older Windows systems such as Windows 2000, even when fully service packed and patched, it is still possible to observe the problem described above. This occurs because even the most recent operating system service packs for these operating systems do not include the very latest system files supplied by Microsoft and delivered with the Bradstone Garden & Driveway Designer 2005 and Bradstone Patio Planner 2005 software. As a result, when the user attempts to install the Bradstone software, the installation detects that a number of key system files are out of date, and attempts to update them. The windows file protection system prevents the update - and the next time setup is run to complete the installation, the Bradstone software detects that a number of key system files are still out of date and repeats the attempt to update them.
 
If you observe this problem, and cannot cure it by bringing your system up to date with service packs and patches then there may be another solution. TRGS have taken steps to build special versions of both Garden & Driveway Designer 2005 and Patio Planner 2005 application software that are capable of resolving this problem. These versions are both distributed on the Bradstone DVD, but are hidden from normal view. They simply wrap older, but still perfectly valid, key system files into their respective install set. As a result, when the user attempts to install the special version Bradstone software, the installation will not detect any out of date system files (because the files wrapped into the install set are older than those on the operating system) - and a standard installation will result. A minor disadvantage with this solution is that for each key system file, the operating system will pop up a warning dialog box, as shown below
 
 
The only action required whenever any (and all) of these warning dialogs pops up is to click the YES button each time - which will instruct the installation to keep your PC's existing key system file and not overwrite it with the older key system file wrapped in the software install set. Depending on your system, you can expect to see ten or so of these minor warnings.
 
 
Please contact TRGS technical support staff to obtain details of how to access this special software on the Bradstone 2005 DVD
 
Remember - always backup key data before making any changes whatsoever to your PC as TRGS Ltd cannot be held responsible for any loss or damage resulting from any solutions or suggestions outlined in the above notes. Microsoft, Windows, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP are trade marks of the Microsoft Corporation.