On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:22:00 -0700, Evan
>Thank you for your reply, but do not judge before you know the facts
So tell us the facts...
>every thing I turned off was done by instruction from the company that
>supplied the program to us, Family Tree Maker 16
Have you heard of "vendor vision"?
Those employed to support a product have one obligation only getting
that product to work. Such techs are actively discouraged from
assisting with anything else. If their product works only if you
strip naked, smear yourself with honey, and lie in an Amazonian ant
nest, then that is what they will tell you to do.
So yes, there is good reason to examine the advice you have been
given, as a sanity-check to ensure it fits the "big picture".
>also let me tell you we are not the only folk with the same problem
>with this program and every thing I turned off was turned back on
>again imediatly when access was not made available through the
>Internet. I can assure you our sytem is working perfectly.
Well, that says a few things. Hints that maybe the program is broken,
prolly because it was written for XP and older, and has not been
re-developed for Vista. I do have some sympathy here, because MS has
encouraged software writers to use facilities that have always posed
risks to the rest of us, and now with Vista, many of these facilities
have been withdrawn, as MS gets belated clue about the impact.
Nevertheless, Vista was released over half a year ago, and has been in
beta for months for that. By now, sware vendors should either stop
claiming to make software "for Windows", or have fixed up thier
products to work with Vista.
I'm glad you haven't been leaving defenses down for very long, during
each test phase, and it's a good thing that Vista is not (as at July
2007) prey to "instant exploits" just from being connected to the
Internet, as unpatched Win2000, XP "Gold" or XP SP1 would be.
>The only problem I have is accessing this one program for
>registration.
Registration is there to serve the vendor, not you. If the vendor has
to put you at risk to complete their wretched registration process,
then I'd most likely dump them and walk swiftly away.
>I asked how many security functions are in the Vista program,
572. Fell better now? -)
Don't worry, I'll get "helpful" later on in the post when I'm done
with all the quotage...
>"alun@texis.invalid" wrote:
>> "Evan" <Evan@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
>> > Because Vista Home Premium on my laptop is preventing a program from
>> > accessing the internet, I need to know how many security features are on
>> > vista that I need to turn off , and how to do it . I have tried turning
>> > off a lot ,but still must be missing some .
Vista differs from older Windows versions in a variety of ways, many
of them having nothing to do withy security at all. So what you have
is a compatibility problem, not a security problem.
>> Now, what program is being prevented from accessing the Internet, and what
>> error messages are you getting?
While waiting for some decent technical info to work with, let's see
if a biopsy of the program name tuns up anything on search...
Search( Family Tree Maker 16 )
Wow, 2 million hits!
OK, Search( "Family Tree Maker 16" Vista )
Two and a half thousand hits, let's drill a bit...
Search( "Family Tree Maker 16" Vista installation )
Search( "Family Tree Maker 16" Vista registration )
....not so much. Now let's look at some of the front-page hits...
http://genealogy-software-review.toptenreviews.com/family-tree-maker-review.html
"Family Tree Maker will work with Windows Vista but a
few features may not function properly. If this is the
case, you can download a free update from the Family
Tree Maker website."
"Once installed, Family Tree Maker (FTM) takes you
through an optional online registration process"
Optional that is encouraging...
Another review:
http://globalgenealogy.com/globalgazette/reviews/2005-08-30-a.htm
Most of the talk is "FTM 2006" and "FTM 2008" it's not clear which of
these (or if either of these) are version 16. Glad to see that's
version 16, not 16-bit (i.e. dating from before Win95!)
This is "home", I think...
http://ancestry.com/
These guys bought the package, which may be tightly integrated into
their website, but I don't see any sware support there. I wonder
where their web site is? Let's try Search( "Family Tree Maker" )
http://www.familytreemaker.com/
There are Community and Support links... ah, OK version 16 pre-dates
2006 and 2008, which explains why it isn't "Vista-ready".
Now we're getting somewhere...
http://past.familytreemaker.com/help/default.aspx
FAQ...
http://pastftm.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/pastftm.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php
....bingo? #1 is "...Vista"...
"Most features on Family Tree Maker are unaffected by
the new version of Microsoft Windows, Windows Vista.
However, certain aspects (like exporting a view, book,
or tree to PDF) will not function without an important
update for your copy of Family Tree Maker. This update
is completely free, and steps for updating your program
are given in this article"
Have you applied that update? Let's see if there's more info... yep
download link, very nice walk-through, recourse to support. I dunno
whether you got this far, as you didn't give us those details.
At this point, let's recap some generic things that may apply...
1) Run As Administrator
Vista will try and spot installation programs and prompt you to run as
admin when they start, but can miss some. So, right-click on it and
choose "Run As Administrator", and see if that works better.
Some apps do things the first time they run that require admin rights.
So if you find (say) settings don't stick, or each time you run the
app, it does first-time stuff over again, then rt-click the app's
shortcut and Run As Administrator.
Some apps always need to run as administrator, either because they
write to restricted locations (more on that later) or they do other
things that are "close to the bone", with effects that affect other
users or the system itself (e.g. writing changes to HKLM).
If this is the case, you can rt-click the shortcut to the app and set
it to always run as admin... but read (2) first.
2) Compatibility modes
Some apps will have known dependencies on the way older versions of
Windows work, and these can be generically accomodated by setting
Vista to pretend to be the older Windows, as seen by the app.
To set this, right-click the shortcut that runs the app, go
Properties, and look for compatibility settings. Try XP, Win98, etc.
3) Restricted locations
Applications with "private" data (i.e. data that only the app can
read" will often put this data within the same directory or subtree
that the program itself occupies.
Windows has moved away from that since Win98, preferring code and data
to be located separately. There are good reasons for this, e.g.
cleaner restoration of data without mixing code versions, etc.
So if you find your app stores data within "C:\Program Files", what I
would do is install it outside of that protected space, e.g. in
C:\FTM16 or somewhere like that. This should solve the problems that
Vista might impose on apps that "foul their own nest" (by constantly
writing changes within its own suubtree).
4) Firewall
What I've read about FTM suggests it is intimately connected to a
parent web site - the site owned by the folks who bought out the
program, AFAIK. You may need to ensure the program's executable is
set to pass through the firewall.
I would NOT advise disabling the firewall altogether, or (if relevant)
lowering your Internet security settings. What I may do, however, is
add the relevant web site to the Trusted Zone and see if that helps.
There may be a checkbox you need to alter to get an http:// URL
processed in this zone (it's supposed to be for https:// only).
5) Other resident software
You have interference from other software, such as 3rd-party
firewalls, resident anti-spyware, and resident antivirus (in
decreasing order of likelyhood).
Be very careful about disabling these, especially where there is a
corresponding Windows facility that is also disabled.
That's as far as I'm prepared to go right now. With more details as
to what is supposed to happen, and what happens instead, I'll revisit
and try to offer more specific advice.
>------------ ----- ---- --- -- - - - -
The most accurate diagnostic instrument
in medicine is the Retrospectoscope
>------------ ----- ---- --- -- - - - -