The Computer Science department at UNCA participates in MSDNAA, Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance. This program allows students enrolled in CSCI courses access to selected Microsoft products along with associated "activation keys". Most of these products are for software development. Common MS Office applications, such as Word® and Excel®, are not available through this program.
Your username for MSDNAA will be your official UNCA email id, something like gsbach@unca.edu. If you cannot read email addressed to your unca.edu account, you will not be able to participate in this program. If your unca.edu email is "bouncing" because you have exceed your quota, clean up your spooled mail now.
Each semester the email addresses of all students enrolled in CSCI classes are sent to Microsoft. Microsoft will register these students and sent them their MSDNAA passwords. This email will be sent with a return address within the domain e-academy.com.
The MSDNAA for the UNCA CSCI department is located at the following URL:
Note that this web site is not located on the UNCA campus and, at times, it may be a tad slow in responding.
After you connect to the UNCA MSDNAA site, click on Log In. At the next screen, give your official UNCA email address (for example, gsbach@unca.edu) as your username. Use the password you received in email from e-academy.com.
If you've already lost your password, use the Login Help box on the right side of the login screen. Your password will be sent to you by email. Don't bother trying again until you can read email on bulldog and get your password.
After Log In you should be connected to page that proclaims "Welcome to your MSDN Academic Alliance Software Center!" Press the Software button to view the your selections.
At the Software page, you can select software via a test-based search box, a top-down product menu, or several icons.
Go ahead and make your choice.
At this point, you'll see a screen that asks you if you wish to "download the software over the Internet". It should give the price of the software as "Free!" but nonetheless give a "Credit card" payment type. Just go ahead and press the "Get It!" box. You won't be asked for a credit card.
Next you'll asked to accept a license and then to provide your name and email address.
If the product you are downloading requires an activation code, you should now see a window that displays a 25-character code. Although this code will be emailed to you, it would be wise to jot it down. Finally, you press a button to actually download the software.
First, you download a relatively small program of about 400kbytes to control the downloading process. You can open it directly from your browser. The downloader program executes in four steps.
This is when the downloader verifies that your computer has enough disk space to hold the downloaded software. You'll be ask if you wish to continue with the installation.
In this step a rather large SDC, Secure Download Cabinet, file is downloaded from a server at UNCA. The downloader program will temporarily store this file on your hard drive.
If you have a slow network connection, this step may require great patience. This one reason why you might want to perform this step on the UNCA campus.
Now the SDC file is decrypted and uncompressed by the downloader. Expect your disk drive to be very busy during this step.
If you have downloaded an application, the downloader will ask if it's alright to run the setup program. At this point, it would be to copy the files in the "upacked directory" (the folder where the installation files are stored) to a CD-R.
If you have downloaded an operating system, you will probably have an "ISO" image file. You will need a third-party CD-R creation program, made by companies such as Roxio and Nero, to create a CD from this image. Roxio CD Creator is available in the HP computers in Robinson 004.
You can also use a "virtual CD-ROM" program to make your ISO file look like a real CD-ROM drive. However, we strong recommend that you copy the ISO to a CD-ROM so that you have a backup of your software.
The steps of the installation will vary according to the downloaded product. Expect to be asked for the 25-character Product Key early in the installation. (You did write it down, didn't you?)