I've had it with Vista!

[MysticGold04]

Originally Posted By: chuckerants
I'm just trying to run the regular Office 2007 programs - Outlook, Excel, Word.

The message that I get is that Windows Installer is trying to configure Office 2007. IOf I let it alone, it finally opens the prgram. This may take anywhere from a minute to forever. When I click on cancel, it does go into the program eventually.


I've had that issue before... very annoying. You said you removed and re-installed? Usually that would solve it. Hmmm have you installed SP1 for Office 2007 yet?

 

[chuckerants]

Yup, SP1 installed. All MS Updates installed.

 

[chuckerants]

FYI - Before I got this laptop, I've read about all of the problems people had with Vista. Yet, I gave it my best shot and even doing the simplest things are wither more difficult or take a longer to do.

For example, I have a lot of pics on a desktop that I use as a file server. On my old XP laptop, when I click on the network drive, the pics showed up as thumbnails right away. With the Vista laptop, either I don't get a thumbnail right away because it's scanning the HD, or I just get icons.

 

[OVERKILL]

Do you have the disks for Office 2007? If so, uninstall and re-install that.

 

[Iain]

Originally Posted By: chuckerants
I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 with 2 gb RAM, T7200 Intel Centrino Duo @ 2.0 Ghz and of course Vista Ultimate.

.......................


You're very lucky to have a business or greater version of Vista.

Business, Ultimate and Enterprise editions all have "Complete PC Backup and Restore" programme.

Once system problems are sorted, connect an appropriate USB 2.0 disk to your machine and use that to create system image backups regularly on it. You won't need OEM system disks ever again.

I've had to restore system disk twice on this machine. "Complete PC Backup and Restore" is excellent programme.

 

[97prizm]

Checkerants,

Dump the office 2007, and do what I did, install a free and legitimate, and the more compact open office. It has writer, draw, impress, Calc, base, and math rolled into one package. The cool thing is your open office word documents will be much smaller in size than the exact same document saved in Microsoft(It never works and is too large, and expensive, and non compatible oh how [censored])Word. One of the other members nailed it on the head too. Dump the piggish Vista, and install Ubuntu, and if your Dell has a 64 bit processor you will notice a huge improvement as Ubuntu is offered in a 64 bit distro, which will utilize both sides of your processor as chances are your version of vista is 32 bit. Ubuntu is the official distribution that dell sells with some of their laptops. Linux has come along way from years ago when you really had to know how to debug, and program home PC's. Distrowatch.com (I'm not affiliated with the site) is a good place to start. I installed Fedora 8 and my HP Pavilion acts like it downed a can of Spike energy drink (ok not quite but it really goes now) compared to XP media center edition. Hopefully this helps, If you're up for installing Ubuntu I can offer limited help, as I haven't installed it but have installed fedora.

 

[chuckerants]

I've tried the PC Restore option and it doesn't work. I was in Chat with Dell Tech Support today and they kept asking me about my Office problem instead. Grrr.

As for Openoffice, I've tried a couple of years ago and I've tried it recently and didn't really like it.

 

[Cutehumor]

I'm at my in law's for thanksgiving. Just got here. I'm on my mother-in-law's dell inspiron 530 desktop with windows vista sp 1.

 

[Iain]

Originally Posted By: chuckerants
I've tried the PC Restore option and it doesn't work. I was in Chat with Dell Tech Support today and they kept asking me about my Office problem instead. Grrr.

As for Openoffice, I've tried a couple of years ago and I've tried it recently and didn't really like it.

Actually, "Complete PC Restore" works very well. It's down to booting from your Microsoft Windows Vista DVD first, then you do a complete system restore from your latest backup image on disk from there.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/magazine/cc137798.aspx

 

[chuckerants]

Now THAT sounds like the info I need.

From Dell's website and their Tech Support, I was told to hit F8 when rebooting. That link says to use the OEM Vista Disc to reboot and Restore from that disc. That makes sense.

I'll try it ASAP.

Thanks
Originally Posted By: Iain
Originally Posted By: chuckerants
I've tried the PC Restore option and it doesn't work. I was in Chat with Dell Tech Support today and they kept asking me about my Office problem instead. Grrr.

As for Openoffice, I've tried a couple of years ago and I've tried it recently and didn't really like it.

Actually, "Complete PC Restore" works very well. It's down to booting from your Microsoft Windows Vista DVD first, then you do a complete system restore from your latest backup image on disk from there.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/magazine/cc137798.aspx

 

[1sttruck]

After turning lots of stuff off, I can't believe the amount of resources used for weenie cosmetic stuff, I find Vista runs fine so far. It's a bit of a pain as it's not supported at work and I need to figure out stuff like my own VPN, but I got to work. Vista is nice in that it has what seems like a useful perfomance measure, the 'Vista score' which rates different parts of your system. You can use the score to evaulate components that you're considering adidng such as graphics cards, where it's been found that some cards actually lower performance compared to the integrated chips. So far the biggest problem I've had with Vista is trying to figure out the new Office 2007 application menus like Excel, and while a pain if you're in a hurry to do something, once you're familiar with them they do seem to work better.

I'm a cranky old dog but can still learn a few new tricks, if I want to.

The problem initially dscribed is one that we see on the XP systems at work, and is an Office problem.

 

[chuckerants]

Oh what a great Turkey Day.

Since I have no family coming over and I'm not going anywhere, I decided to fiddle with the laptop.

I tried booting into the Vista DVD that Dell sent me using the info from the article posted above - no go.

I have used the Vista DVD once before to manually reinstall Vista. Now the laptop will not read the DVD for some reason. The DVD is recognized by my Dell desktop. The Laptop DVD player is also able to read other DVDs.

So, I got on the phone to Tech Support. Today, I get someone in the Philippines who keeps calling me, "Sir Chuck". (I told him that he could drop the "Sir" when speaking to an American)

The very first time I called Tech Support a couple of months ago, they told me Dell could not send me copies of the Discs that came with the laptop as it was no longer being sold. NOW the tech support guy is saying they have a full set of DVDs (6 Discs) in the mail from the link I filled out yesterday while Googling yesterday.

So, I'll wait til I get those DVDs and try again.

BTW, I know that it's a lot cheaper and easier these days too use VoIP to connect to call centers around the world, but [censored], Dell's VoIP connection really sucked. The delay in the phone call really hindered the conversation.