Monday 14 February 2011

Problems with Visio 2010 and Access 2007

Today I was asked to install Visio 2010 on to a customer's PC that already had Office 2007 Professional installed.  Knowing that there can be problems with having different versions of Office installed on the same PC, I did a custom install and put Visio 2010 in a separate Program Files folder to the rest of the Office suite.  This normally stops the various versions from fighting with each other.

Alas, in this instance it didn't work.  Once Visio 2010 was installed, Access 2007 refused to open any databases that 15 minutes earlier worked just fine.Visio 2010 on the other hand worked fine.

Running the Office 2007 diagnostics fixed the problem in Access but guess what.....

Next time Visio 2010 is opened it reconfigures itself and breaks Access 2007 again.  What joy!!

A bit of Googling led me to this article .  It turns out that installing Visio 2010 installs a newer version (V14) of the Access Database Engine.  Unfortunately Access 2007 needs V12 to work properly.  To cut a long story short, these two programs, it would appear, cannot be made to live together.  It's one or the other.  Way to go Microsoft.

The thing that surprises me is that the boffins at Microsoft don't see this as a problem and quite seriously suggested doing a repair (which can take 15 minutes) everytime you want to use Access.  I don't think so.

Anyway, I sorted it by putting Visio on a machine that had the 2010 Office suite on and all was well.  Luckily I had that option open to me.  Some offices I visit wouldn't.

Sunday 13 February 2011

Adobe CS3 on Windows 7 64bit

I have just upgraded my desktop machine from Vista 64 bit to Windows 7 64 bit - a long time overdue i hear you say but it is now done.

Anyway, I had a few issues geting Adobe Creative Suite 3 to play nicely under Windows 7 64 bit so i thought i'd post the solution here to save others having to tear their hair out.  The problem is that when you try and open any of the CS3 programs, they either take forever or don't open properly if at all.  I tried the usual 'Run as Administrator' and 'Run in compatability mode for Windows XP SP2' tricks but it made no difference - CS3 still wouldn't play.

Well a bit of digging around found the ever so simple solution.  Forget compatibility mode or 'Run as Administrator'; you don't need those.

What you do need is this file from the Adobe website.  It is a patch for the Adobe Acrobat 8 Licensing Service and once installed, will allow CS3 to run properly.  It says on the Adobe site that it is for Vista only, but it installed just fine and fixed my problem on Windows 7 64 bit.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

The Net Widens

I've just had an email from a client near Evesham who received a scam call this morning.  It follows a slightly different form than the one i reported on Friday and to save retyping, I will just 'cut and paste' the description I received. (with thanks to Karen)


"A foreign gentlemen clarified my telephone number and asked if I have a computer running windows XP (I do have one that runs this version of windows still) and he said that Nigerian hackers are targeting windows XP and causing huge problems and that his company was ringing each and every person known to have XP.... he asked me to switch on my computer straight away so that he could help me....

I had asked who he was - didn't catch his name, but he was reluctant to expand on that and I persisted in asking him 'from where' - he said 'Full PC'
Of course, I declined as I didn't really trust him and said goodbye."

So it looks as if they are targeting everywhere at the moment.  Do what my client did - just hang up - do not let them take control of your PC.