I’m cut. Bruised. Took a couple of jabs to my left temple and a solid uppercut to my billable hours today but I won’t give up… can’t give up. I won’t re-image to XP even if all my clients fire me. It’s me against … I dunno what cause I love Vista. But I’m bleedin…
So get the Vaseline out, a spit bucket, and your choice of friend to cut your swolen parts… here’s today’s update.
*UPDATE*
I’ve been Googling a bit about Vista’s security and found this great article that explains… something. It did point me in the right direction, however, for installing Adobe. Go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management. Drop open Local Users. Right-click “Administrator” and go to properties. Enable the account and reset it’s password to something safe. Now login as the Administrator and you can run Adobe Acrobat installer. This makes utterly no sense to me.
Summary for those who are, like me, struggling to get something done today:
- QuickBooks 2004 doesn’t work persiod. I have a feeling that all versions won’t as this appears to be a COM or COM+ access error. You get an Access Violation that is very, very uninformative and I don’t have Hanselman Super Powers to figure this out (nor the time). I’m moving to MS Accounting Express anyway so this is a “Non-starter”.
- Daemon Tools and MagicISO/MagicDisc does NOT work either. They might install successfully and may even work for 2 hours for you, but then they magically stop. I need an ISO reader.
- Adobe Acrobat Reader won’t install unless you jump through some hoops (see above). Says you need to be the admnistrator (see below). This one really hurts. I made sure to use their Vista RC1 release too.
- On the positive side, Last Known Configuration actually works, and so does System Restore.
Without using swear words, I just have to know: did Microsoft test this thing while actually doing real work? Cause I tell ya – well there’s just no way they could have. Or I’m a complete moron (which is also likely but I’m sure there will be many more like me to follow). I have to think they did, and I’m just missing something here.
Round 1, and I’m On the Ropes…
So besides being a complete nerd, I actually try to make a living at this business. Given that, I have to keep track of who owes me what so I can modulate the volume of my voice properly when asking them to pay me. I use what 90% of all small businesses use: QuickBooks. And guess what? It doesn’t work on Vista (I’m using Quickbooks Pro 2004) – “Invalid Access Error”. I would have snapped a shot of it but I was so flustered (my client and I are trying to figure out how much he paid me 
I didn’t get a chance. I decided to kick up Virtual PC to get around this, and use my Virtual Server to run my books (yah that makes sense)… and looky here:
You’ve got to be kidding me. Do the geeks in the OS building ever pass the guys in the apps building? Is the MS company phone sheet up to date? I’m wondering. This compatibility error is all to familiar! I am pleased to report however that VPC works just fine. I installed QB on my server and now I can use my books again.
I am not a big fan of Quickbooks anyway, so I am going to give MS Accounting 2007 Express a spin. So far it’s OK – a little slow but it’s working pretty well. Cost me 3 hours of time today while I moved my invoices and payments over however – that sucks.
Round 2: I’m Staggerin…
When I tried to install QB Pro on Vista (I imaged it to an ISO), I tried to launch MagicDisc (from MagicISO) and it crashed. Vista uninstalled the virtual device driver for me …
So now I can’t load ISOs. A nice guy (Anthony) told me the new Daemon toolset should work with Vista so I loaded up the latest version of Daemon Tools (4.0.2). I got a warning when installing (what else is new) Daemon but I went ahead anyway. It’s almost pointless to see this warning – if I heeded every one of them I would have re-imaged back to XP 3 days ago and thrown Vista in the trash.
I am not big on virtual device drivers, but Daemon and MagicDisc might have had a little row. Or maybe Daemon had it’s way with my registry – when I loaded up the QB image my hard drive started to spin and didn’t stop. My system slowed to a crawl and I had to reboot the old fashion way – power cycle.
1… 2…3…4… I Struggle To My Feet…
The only thing worse than the BlueScreen is the BlackScreen in my mind. That’s when you know you have an OS, and nothing appears on the monitor after the inital BIOS loading bits and all you see is blackness. Well that’s precisely what happened next. I tried to launch in safe mode next and everything halted when loading the video drivers. Great.
I gave one last shot before re-imaging and booted to “Last Known Good Configuration”. And Lord Love a Duck it worked! I booted up, did a System Restore, and I’m back in business.
Round 3: I’m Still In This…
So now I have QB open in VPC and Office Accounting open on Vista, and I am trying to get my bank statements. I go to my bank’s website and download my statements in PDF format. Vista tells me it doesn’t have a way to read PDF files, so I go to Adobe’s website and try to download it. They cleverly use a #$%$ load of javascript to facilitate downloading of their flagship product, and IE7 doesn’t like any of it so I can’t download due to the javascript errors. Could this really get any worse? I finally find a link, download Acrobat reader, and yes, it can get worse:
Believe it or not, I am an admin (at least I think so). I checked my account and it said I was. Unless Vista’s lying to me? Now I’ve never used an F-bomb in my posts before, but damn am I close. There are a ton of little niggling reasons for me to re-image but at this point I have to stick this out, if only so that you, dear reader, don’t lose 6 hours of your day like I just did.
If any of you MS guys are reading this – toss me a friggin bone here. What’s up? Yes my account is of type “Administrator”.
I can’t give up… won’t give up…
