Personal Injury Law

Upgrading Software Curses ? Outlook File Import

By Rod Heggy

It always amazes me how unhelpful the software sites of manufacturers truly are. I was forced to upgrade to Windows 7 by an accumulation of errors in XP until my choices were only either reinstall XP or install 7. I chose the latter.

Yes, I own an Apple Lap Top, so I already know there is at least one alternative to Windows. But, my desktop computer still has plenty of life and the weakened economy does not seem to have depressed prices at Apple. So, once again I decided to wander through the unholy land of software installation.

The replacement of XP by Windows 7 was extremely time consuming and fatiguing. This was mostly true because of the riddles wrapped in enigmas that exist for online and other help. The people that provide most of this written help work in the field and often do by instinct rather than thought, and thus do not explain in the articles many of the things they take for granted. Those of us who are forced to actually fix these things only every few years, however, are clueless about some of these preparatory steps.

For example, only after reading article after article both on the open internet and on the Microsoft web sites does the process for transferring .pst files from a back up drive to Outlook, once again safely nestled in Windows 7, become doable.

First, of course, figure out where Outlook keeps its files in your old XP installation and back them up. Back up everything in sight and then check and make sure hidden files are copied as well. Do not stop until these files are safely copied onto a UBS external hard drive or a disk. Just finding these files can be a challenge if you fail to do so early. I had to use an Outlook file recovery program I had left over from a past problem just to relocate them.

Once you have installed Outlook successfully, the import file pull down menu in Outlook will drive you insane unless you do more work on the .pst files you copied in the step above. For, in Windows 7, there are many little quirks, and there may be some in XP that I had long forgotten.

These steps include weird things like making hidden files visible, and making sure ?permissions? line up. The .pst files themselves must have the correct permissions engrafted into their very being. How to do all of these steps are easily explained in articles freely available, but the problem is that Outlook does not in the import pull down menu mention any of them and the articles on importing .pst files into Outlook rarely mention these necessary steps either.

In the upgrade to Windows 7, one other thing caught me. My sound card stopped working. My sound card was not easily identified either on the computer using its system information or looking at the drivers. Just before opening the case and looking directly at the card, I noted that the latest available driver for my card was last amended by the card manufacturer while Windows 7 was still in beta. There was no driver available from the time that Windows 7 went public in the fourth quarter of 2009 or after, even though Dell?s diagnostics swore up and down the computer was completely compatible with Windows 7. Maybe an IT professional could make it work. But, I opted to invest $100 in a new sound card that presumably has a later driver.

The moral of the story could be ?buy Apple.? It could be ?never give up.? It could be ?hire someone to do it.? For me, once again, I have defeated the dastardly plot of Microsoft.

Full post as published by Terra Extraneus on February 28, 2010 (boomark / email).