Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Laptop pain

Ho hum. I bought a new laptop today for Anne to use at home. She's offered to take over doing the accounts and so we decided to get a new Windows laptop and install Microsoft Money on it. Easier said than done.

The laptop is okay, it's Microsoft that gets me frustrated. I put the installation CD in the drive and the first thing that Vista says is that it doesn't recognise the publisher. Strange that, given that it's the same company that writes the operating system. So I ignore the warnings and install the programme. Next I think to myself it should be a simple matter of restoring a backup of the file from the old laptop to the new one. Not so.

Invalid filenames, missing permissions. nothing works! It looks very much like I will have to start from scratch and put all the data in again. Unbelievable! I even tried replacing the file manually but now it won't even open that one.

What is going on? Does this mean that there is no point backing up a file because there's no way it can be restored? What happens if the laptop crashes and I have to restore the operating system? Will it reject the file again?

Well, by now it should at least have managed to install the 15 critical updates Vista needs, so maybe I'll try again. Is there a way to sweet talk a PC into doing what you want it to do, or do I need to fetch my Birmingham screwdriver?

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