Windows Vista Update

In April, I (Michael Burns) wrote an article on Vista and Office 2007 that was published in CAmagazine. When I wrote the article, I learned that my computer would not support Vista and the article was therefore based on a demonstration performed by Microsoft. I have now purchased a new laptop with an Intel Core DUO Processor running at 1.60GHz and with 2GB of memory. I thought I was ready for Vista when I installed Office 2007. Vista does come with a utility that makes it fairly easy to transfer your files and settings from your old computer. I initially thought things were looking good.

A week later, I was ready to go back to XP and Office 2003. First, performance on Outlook 2007 had been abysmal. I often needed to wait a few seconds until my typing appeared on the screen or for my scrolling to actually take place. I have archived and deleted messages as I have read that Outlook files greater than 2GB can have problems. My Outlook file is now 275MB. I also installed an Outlook upgrade dated April 13, 2007 that according to Microsoft “fixes performance issues that occur when you work with items in a large .pst file”. I also turned off indexing, which dramatically improves finding files based on any keyword search. I had 2 security systems working and I removed one of them. Despite all these steps, Outlook 2007 continued to crawl.

So I contacted Microsoft support, who spent 1 ½ hours on the phone with me trying to resolve the problem. Most of the time spent was trying to remove Outlook add-in programs that might have caused the problem. We tried a few but no luck. Unfortunately, some of the add-in programs including those from Microsoft could not be removed. The support person logged this as a problem to be followed up by Microsoft. I was told that the problem should be fixed by launching Outlook in safe mode. You don’t need to load Vista in safe mode - you just need to run Outlook in safe mode. Good news – Outlook 2007 is now working well in terms of performance. You do lose some functionality in safe mode including preferences cannot be saved and additional features and programs are not automatically loaded. A few days later, Microsoft called back and fixed the problem. I was told to disable User Account Control (UAC), which is a feature in Windows that can help prevent unauthorized changes to your computer. I was then able to disable the culprit add-in that caused all the problems. It turned out to be an add-in from Cyberlink, which was one of the programs that came preloaded on my laptop. With Cyberlink disabled, Outlook 2007 runs great.

I did have another problem that was also resolved. My personal folders disappeared after using the system for about a week. Outlook reported that errors had been detected and that I should run a program called Scanpst.exe, which I did. The program went through multiple phases of analysis, backed up my file and “repaired” my file. However, there was no change after the repair. However, I soon figured out that I had multiple Outlook files and then I repaired the right one and my personal folders were back.

Other problems have been learning where all the commands are now located in Excel and Word. If you’re an old dog, you might have a hard time learning new tricks. Although the layout of the toolbars and commands may be ultimately more logical, I could happily go back to the old layout. Another problem has been getting some programs to work. For example, my version of QuickBooks 2005 does not work with Vista. I needed to purchase (not update) QuickBooks 2007, which is Vista ready. It seems vendors like Intuit (developers of QuickBooks) will make a windfall profit as their customers are forced to purchase the new version.

The morale of the story is to always be very careful when investing in new systems. It’s not just the cost of the software – it’s also the opportunity cost of making it work.