I pulled my hair out the other day troubleshooting a computer problem. A client reported that Outlook was not working correctly, asking if I could I please fix it. Well, of course – I’ll be right over!
Generally, Outlook worked fine. However, the client had a special feature within Outlook which required some VB code to work its magic. Specifically, this specialized code watched outgoing emails, and when it noticed a specific type of email message it would automatically Blind Carbon Copy other email accounts. Their problem was that this added feature stopped working.
Fortunately, the Office Secretary noted the last time this feature worked was before the PC was updated from Vista (good riddance!) to Windows 7 64bit. These in place upgrades generally go well, and only require an update to the video driver and a few hours time.
So why would a Windows upgrade break this custom code that had been added to Outlook? Was it just a coincidence? That was the million $$ question. It turns out that the VB code was not executing at all. Further sleuthing determined that the self-signed certificate was no longer “trusted.” It turns out that Windows 7 does not inherit the trusted certificate store from Vista during an upgrade.
So there you have it. Next time you want to impress your peers with your technical knowledge, just tell them that Windows 7 upgrades generally go well, but they will have to update the video driver. Then casually state that if they use any self-signed certificates, they will have to add them back in the certificate store. Hopefully, they won’t ask you how.
2 comments:
Pfft, Vista works fine (for home users). Microsoft only abandoned it because of all the negative publicity at launch. Windows 7 is, in actuality, little more than Vista with a bit of polish, and a few tweaks here and there. The type of stuff that would have eventually gone into Vista anyway, had the market not been on a witch hunt. And despite how much (pre-conceived) negativity people had toward Vista, now people act like Windows 7 is one of the best operating systems Microsoft has ever released. It's amazing what a little marketing spin (and a product rename) can do to change the public's perception.
BTW, "Windows 7" is a bit of a misnomer. The actual version number is 6.1. Don't believe me? Go to a command prompt and type "ver".
While I agree that, under the hood, Windows 7 is not significantly different from Vista, it is still a thorn. The problem is that Microsoft and device vendors alike appear to have turned their backs on Vista. Consequently, the bugs and performance issues typical of a new OS will plague Vista users until they move on to an Operating System that is being actively updated. I don't recall a week going by for over a year while I was using Vista daily, that I wasn't frustrated at least once by its quirks.
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