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General Vista Help and Support The general Windows Vista discussion forum, for topics not covered elsewhere. (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general) |
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Timeslips & BDE in general on Windows Vista doesn't work
I recently purchased Windows Vista, and found that Timeslips, a program
costing over $800 per seat, no longer works. After considerable research, I have learned that this has something to do with the refusal of Vista to allow BDE to place its files in the places it must place them on the root directory. I have tried every alleged "tool" of Vista to try to make this program work...all to no avail. The suggestion of Sage Software, which was very unhelpful, is that I simply buy the latest version, Timeslips 2008, which is designed for Windows Vista. Obviously, however, I am not willing to pay another $800 for the dubious practical benefits of the Vista operating system. Should I just return to Windows XP, demand money back on Vista, and give up. Should I just install new hardware, and continue fixing my old computer, and try to make it last another 20 years, so I never have to deal with Vista again? Does anyone know any way for me to get this expensive program to work in Windows Vista? Is there any plan to issue a service release of Vista to correct this defect, such that mission-critical programs, like Timeslips, will work? |
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Timeslips & BDE in general on Windows Vista doesn't work
I recently purchased Windows Vista, and found that Timeslips, a program
costing over $800 per seat, no longer works. After considerable research, I have learned that this has something to do with the refusal of Vista to allow BDE to place its files in the places it must place them on the root directory. I have tried every alleged "tool" of Vista to try to make this Mike Brannigan's reply is spot-on, and I fully agree with him. To add a explanatory comment - Microsoft does not break backwards compatibilty for no good reason. In fact, they go to extreme lengths to preserve compatibility for old applications. Although it's not visible to the end user, there's a engine running inside Vista - the shimeng.dll and apphelp.dll DLLs - whose sole purpose is to tweak Vista in various small ways, so popular older applications can continue running in the new Vista environment. This "shim engine" adds support for literally hundreds of applications which otherwise could not run on Vista. Designing and maintaining the shim engine is a major dev project - reflecting Microsoft's commitment to compatibilty. The compatibility shims are also updated via Windows Update, as shims for additional applications become available from Microsoft. However .... for years, Microsoft has been heavily criticised (perhaps rightly) for not being strong on security. In the Vista release, Microsoft have taken security very seriously. Which has paid off, Vista is an operating system which is actually secure enough to survive in today's lethally virulent networked environment (and secure enough to compete with its market rivals). By and large, this is a Good Thing; because busineses were stuck in a continuous, expensive struggle to maintain computer security in the face of security weaknesses in previous versions of Windows. That struggle is by no means over, but it should be easier, less costly, and less time consuming, as Vista becomes the common Windows base. A side effect of this improved security is that some applications which use unsafe, insecure practices will no longer run on Vista. It appears that BDE is one of these. Writing files to the root directory is a known and proven exploit, which has been used by viruses to gain control of a computer. This is not a hypothetical precaution in Vista - it is blocking a proven attack on your business data. By preventing apps writing to the root directory, Microsoft is keeping your data safer. BDE is a very old product, with an antiquated design, inefficient compared to contemporary database products. Even in the pure Borland/Delphi world, BDE is deprecated in favour of DBExpress. Delphi developers having been having the "Is BDE dead?" discussion since around 2001. So it's not too surprising that BDE-based products have reached the end of their usable life. Also note that Microsoft has been actively working with major (and minor!) ISVs to start developing their applications to run on Vista, for several years - "Longhorn" developer conferences were being run back in 2003. I guess Sage took notice, because their current Timeslips 2008 is Vista compatible. If your current version of Timeslips is not suppoted on Vista by the vendor Sage, then it would be unwise to try to "force" it to run. Imagine if you hit some kind of data corruption and needed to get your timeslip database recovered ... since you are in on unsuppored platform, Sage would put strict limits on the amount of support they would provide to help you recover (like possibly, no support at all). Running unsupported is nearly always false economy; and agonising in a crisis. As Mike Brannigan noted, if Timeslips is a crucial business application, then you need to keep it supported, in either of 2 ways: - run it on a pre-Vista version of Windows; or - upgrade to the current version. Microsoft has Windows XP under mainstream support until April 2009. It will then move to more limited "extended" support, until April 2014. So there is no urgency for you to get off Windows XP. If you have purchased new hardware with Vista pre-installed, you may be able to downgrade the Vista licence to a legitimate XP licence, via Microsoft. See here for details: http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...rencesheet.pdf This would make it easier for you to stay on XP as your main platform, going forward (you'll want a migration plan in place, in time for end of XP support). Depending on your scenario, Microsoft provides an additional free facility which allows you to run legacy applications on a Vista PC, if the app is not Vista-comaptible. This is Virtual PC: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...c/default.mspx Virtual PC lets you run an complete XP "virtual PC, in a window on your Vista desktop. You can install applications (such as Timeslips) into the Virtual PC, just like you would a real physical PC. This why, you can have your legacy XP apps and current Vista-comaptible apps running side by side, so you can alt-tab between them, cut-n-paste data, share files, etc. And you would be running your Timeslips app on a supported platform. Not all apps are good candidates to run in a virtual machine; but many desktop business apps work very well in this environment. Anyway Virtual PC is a free download, so you can try it and see. If i tdoesn't work well for Timeslips, just through it away (note, you need to supply an XP license, just like you would for a real, physical XP machine). Hope this helps, Andrew PS: As above I strongly discourage you from trying to run Timeslips in an unsupported environment. But for the sake of completeness .... you may be able to reconfigure BDE so it does not attempt to write files to the root directory. To do this, find BDEAdmin.exe, located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Borland Shared\BDE. Right-click the EXE file and choose "Run as Administrator". Enter the administrator credentials. Under Native, click PARADOX, and change NET DIR to point to some location other than the root directory - such as C:\Users\Public\Documents\BDE_Data. This will work for BDE itself; whether Timeslips can cope with the BDE database being relocated to another location, I have no idea. I don't think it's a good thing to try. But technically, it might be possible. -- Andrew McLaren amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au |
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Timeslips & BDE in general on Windows Vista doesn't work
snip
Hope this helps, Andrew snip OMG... the OP should send you a check for this response! Unbelieveable! Probably a better response than the OP would get from any of the vendors. My hat's off! Lang |
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Timeslips & BDE in general on Windows Vista doesn't work
"Lang Murphy" wrote ...
OMG... the OP should send you a check for this response! Unbelieveable! Probably a better response than the OP would get from any of the vendors. My hat's off! Awww, shucks Thanks, brother; appreciate the feedback! I got a bit carried away, but ... it was an interesting question/issue. Cheers, -- Andrew McLaren amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au |
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Timeslips & BDE in general on Windows Vista doesn't work
"Andrew McLaren" wrote in message
... "Lang Murphy" wrote ... OMG... the OP should send you a check for this response! Unbelieveable! Probably a better response than the OP would get from any of the vendors. My hat's off! Awww, shucks Thanks, brother; appreciate the feedback! I got a bit carried away, but ... it was an interesting question/issue. Cheers, -- Andrew McLaren amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au Well... that was, without doubt, one of the most detailed responses I've ever seen in this ng. Just happy to have you hangin' out here, bro; keep it up! Lang |
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Timeslips & BDE in general on Windows Vista doesn't work
I have purchased the latest Timeslips and still cannot get it to work properly. Had problems installing, which Sage helped with by giving me a new configuration code. But still CANNOT PRINT from software - no invoices, reports, nothing. Anyone have this problem? found any solutions? Problems with BDE (Timeslips) & Vista;339425 Wrote: I recently purchased Windows Vista, and found that Timeslips, a program costing over $800 per seat, no longer works. After considerable research, I have learned that this has something to do with the refusal of Vista to allow BDE to place its files in the places it must place them on the root directory. I have tried every alleged "tool" of Vista to try to make this program work...all to no avail. The suggestion of Sage Software, which was very unhelpful, is that I simply buy the latest version, Timeslips 2008, which is designed for Windows Vista. Obviously, however, I am not willing to pay another $800 for the dubious practical benefits of the Vista operating system. Should I just return to Windows XP, demand money back on Vista, and give up. Should I just install new hardware, and continue fixing my old computer, and try to make it last another 20 years, so I never have to deal with Vista again? Does anyone know any way for me to get this expensive program to work in Windows Vista? Is there any plan to issue a service release of Vista to correct this defect, such that mission-critical programs, like Timeslips, will work? -- efa Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com |