All my equipment requres comptuers. My older equipment requires older computers. As of now I have several XP's running, a 98se, one win7 and one win8.
In the past 8 months or so I've been suffering thru stupid issues...
XP in the garage started slow-motion crashing. Traced it to the Avast antivirus program. For some reason it was crashing System Restore whenever it was creating a restore point in the background. The fix, installed Panda instead. That computer's been fine ever since.
Then my 'main' computer, an XP just like in the garage (Dell's if that matters) started running like molasses. Short version, the Panda on it was causing problems. I've since been running it with no AV at all, and ever since it runs like lightning. But I have to keep it off the 'net. Been using Outlook Express since the late '90's, hard to pull away from that, and I won't do IMAP mail (one of my quirks), so no mail on the win8. Also, the win8 absolutely will not load either my GCC or my LS900 laser's drivers. The GCC because it won't work with a 64 bit machine, the LS900 because it's plain too old. Removing signed driver enforcement doesn't help. The only machines it can run are my newers USB connected, of which only my IS400 is close enough. I have figured out how to load generic drivers to run my really old machines from Gravostyle thru my network so that's good. So what I did was install an XP VM in the win8. And for the most part, the VM worked wonderfully. However, as time went by (like all of 3 months), and I started letting MS update the win8, the XPVM became virtually un-useable. 20 second wait times for the font menu to appear in Corel, 20 to 30 seconds to close files..? So I gave up.
My ace in the hole was a 64bit win7 enterprise machine. Decided to swap that in place of the win8. I'd already used it in the garage, but had to replace it because of the GCC's lack of 64bit capability. AND, the 7 would load all my drivers. As usual the process was much slower than I'd hoped, but after 8 days of fffff with it, AND finding a good replacement for my Outlook Express (called OEClassic), I had it running great, doing everything it used to take 2 computers to do. It's only drawback, it had no sound card. I really didn't need one except for listening to phone messages via email, but I had a PCI Soundblaster card, so I stuck it in a slot and fired it up. Got all the 'new hardware-installing driver' messages, and everything seemed good to go. But the fun lasted about 3 minutes, when I was greeted with a blue screen that said in great big letters:
HARDWARE MALFUNCTION
PARITY ERROR
SYSTEM HALTED
--- OK, guess it didn't like the sound card!
Turns out that sound card might was well have been a nuclear bomb. The computer refused to do anything but run the main fan. No BIOS, no nothing. But funny thing, after sitting about 4 days, it booted up! And what do I find? "this version of Windows is not genuine".... ARGGHH!! that, and even though it seems to work, most programs won't load, and it won't shut down. I can use Notepad.
So anyway, after the 7 fubar's now I have 8 days worth of work and email buried in a dead computer, and had to put the 8 back in service. The OEClassic guy was very quick with an email to help me figure out where stored files were, so it only took a couple hours to get the new email program and everything else transferred over to the 8. The great thing I now get email on the 8. But, I still can't run a laser with it so I'm forced to keep sliding back & forth between 2 computers to get anything done.
So my next trick is going to be to put the 8 on fiber duty, and take the 32bit Win7 Ultimate laptop that's now running the fiber and make it my new "main" computer. And it can't happen fast enough... I've had Corel X3 and X4 on the 8 for some time now, however, a few months ago the X4 keep giving me this stupid Visual Basic 'run time' error, something to do with my Triumph software's plugin. I have no idea how to debug it. But now that had to use X4 on this computer rather than the VM, I uninstalled X4 and re-installed it, and voila! The error is gone!
but no, it simply moved to the X3...? And to clear up why I need both Corels-- it's because when I import DXF's into X4, all text that is saved center justified at a particular coordinate is now LEFT justified on that coordinate. So instead of words being centered over holes, the left edge of the text is at the centerline. But X3 doesn't do this, it just puts text where it's supposed to. X4 is a lot better at many other things than X3, so I use both.
So about an hour ago, I got tired of this stupid run time error in X3, and decided to uninstall and re-install it.
Guess what? Now it won't install. I keep getting this:
nocorel.jpg
-- I've tried everything- turned off all programs, tried from a fresh boot, tried in safe mode (no installer in safe mode), I even un-installed X4 to see if that was the problem..
Nope. Still no go. And it won't surprise me a bit if X4 won't re-install.
So I'm giving up on this useless win8, I've always hated it. Going to finish working on the laptop and see where that takes me. And FWIW win10 is completely useless to me...
In the meantime, if anyone has any clue why this X3 won't load, I'd love to hear it, OR some clue as to fixing Visual Basic would be nice! I'm so far behind on my work because of this nonsense it's not even funny...
- fiber lasers
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