Dairy Effluent Storage Calculator (DESC)
Current version: 1.57 Expires: 31/01/2022 |
The Dairy Effluent Storage Calculator was developed by FLRC with support from Horizons Regional Council.
In recent years additional funding has been provided by the dairy industry and regional councils to make it widely available. Soil and climate data were supplied by regional councils, NIWA and Plant & Food Research.
DairyNZ has recently developed a new web-based Dairy Effluent Storage Calculator:
The web-based version is now fully operational and should now be used for all FDE storage calculations. Since the web-based version will not open old .des files, Massey University has released an interim version of their original calculator - specifically to allow users to print input and summary data contained in historic .des files to PDF format. There will be no further releases of Massey University’s original calculator.
If you need any clarification please contact us.
Download and Installation instructions (recently updated)
Preliminary Steps
The internal database of this version of the Calculator requires version 2010 of the Microsoft Office Access Database Engine.
If this is your first installation of the Calculator, you must download and install the Microsoft Office Access Database Engine 2010, by clicking on the link:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/download/details.aspx?id=13255
Click the ‘Download’ button and then make sure that the only file selected is the ‘AccessDatabaseEngine.exe’ file (25.3 MB). Clicking ‘Next’ will allow you run the file or (if preferred) save it to a location on your hard disk to run later.
A note of caution:
The Calculator is a 32-bit based program and will run under either a 32 or 64-bit Windows operating system. However, it will fail to install if a 64-bit version of Microsoft Office is present. There is no work-around for this at the moment (apart from replacing 64-bit Microsoft Office with its 32-bit counterpart).
Hardware Requirements:
Processor:
Any 32 bit or 64 bit processor.
RAM:
1024 MB or (preferably) more.
Screen Resolution:
At least 1024 x 768 pixel resolution.
Colour Depth:
At least 24 bit colour depth.
To install the Calculator:
Clicking on a download link will enable you to run the setup program immediately or allow you to save the setup file to your computer for installation at a later time. You must elect to save the setup file to the hard disk on your computer otherwise the Calculator will fail to install.
Once you have located the downloaded setup file on your hard disk, right-click the file, select ‘Run as administrator’, and the setup program will then guide you through the installation process and will download additional components from the internet if they are not already installed on your computer.
Software Requirements:
Operating System:
Windows XP is no longer supported. The Calculator will happily run under the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2003. It will also run under Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2. It has not been tested under Windows 8/8.1 or Windows Server 2012/2012 R2.
Additional Software Components:
Installation of this version of the Calculator also requires the installation of the Microsoft Office Access Database Engine 2010. Users must manually download and install this component before running the setup program for the Calculator.
The setup program will automatically download and install additional software components if they are absent from your system – administrative privileges are required for the setup program to install these components.
These components are:
Microsoft Windows .NET Framework 4.5.2 Full
Microsoft Windows Installer 4.5
Known Issues:
Having installed the Calculator, if you have subsequent problems, then check through the following 'Known Issues' for a possible cause and resolution.
1. Symptoms:
Some users have reported instances of a successful installation of the Calculator, but that it fails to run thereafter. An error message is displayed indicating that the expiration date for the Calculator has been exceeded. A check of the system date and time shows everything to be in order.
Cause:
The system locale has been set to a region other than ‘New Zealand’ – the most common alternative configuration is ‘United States’. The Calculator fails to convert alternative locale formats when checking system time against expiration time.
Resolution:
Instructions below refer specifically to Windows 7 and Windows 10 users:
Navigate to the Control Panel and open the “Region and Language” or "Region" applet.
Under the “Formats” tab, the “Format” should be set to “English (New Zealand)”.
Under the “Location” tab, the “Current Location” should be set to “New Zealand”.
Under the “Administrative” tab the “Current language for non-Unicode programs” should be set to “English (New Zealand)”.
2. Symptoms:
There have been some cases where installation fails despite the user having logged on as a member of the Administrators Group. The following error message is displayed:
“Error 1925. You do not have sufficient privileges to complete this installation for all users of the machine. Log on as an administrator and then retry this installation.”
Cause:
This behaviour is by design. According to Microsoft, users who are logged on as members of the Administrators Group operate with Standard User privileges.
Resolution:
Instructions below refer specifically to Windows 7 and Windows 10 users – it will likely work with Windows 8.
Download the Calculator to your hard disk.
Right-click the downloaded file and select “Run as Administrator”
– this should give you limited (but sufficient) privileges to enable successful completion of the installation.
3. Symptoms:
During the process of selecting a rainfall site, the mouse cursor fails to change to selection mode when hovering over a site icon. Subsequently, the user is unable to left-click to change the current rainfall site.
Cause:
Newer monitors are capable of displaying high quality images in high resolution. The downside is that fonts, although having a crisper outline, are much smaller and are generally more difficult to read. Microsoft has compensated for this by providing a facility allowing custom scaling so that fonts appear larger. When this is invoked by the user (or automatically by the operating system), virtual dpi scaling is introduced and the symptoms described above appear.
Resolution:
Instructions below refer specifically to Windows 7 and Windows 10 users – it will likely work with Windows 8.
1a. If your operating system is Windows 64-bit, navigate to the following folder using Windows explorer:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Massey University\FLRC\DairyEffluentStorageCalculator
1b. If your operating system is Windows 32-bit, navigate to the following folder using Windows explorer:
C:\Program Files\Massey University\FLRC\DairyEffluentStorageCalculator
2. Right-click the file ‘DairyEffluentStorage.exe’. If the ‘.exe’ suffix is not visible, then Windows will list the file in question as an ‘application file’.
3. After right-clicking, a pop-up menu should appear. Select ‘Properties’, then left-click the ‘Compatibility’ tab.
4. Click ‘Change High DPI Settings’. A window should appear with the title ‘Choose the high DPI settings for this program’.
5. Make sure that the only check box ticked is ‘Override high DPI scaling behaviour’
6. Ensure that ‘Scaling performed by:’ dropdown list box is set to ‘Application’.
Future versions of the Calculator will have this setting built into the executable file so that this manual adjustment should no longer be necessary.
Download:
Please make sure you have read through all the instructions for download and installation, then:
The software is approximately 150MB and may take some time to download (depending on your set-up).
Before using the software, read the DairyNZ publication 'How to Use the DESC'
Problems:
If you have problems that cannot be resolved by the information provided here, then contact us and outline your issue in an email.