Friday, November 20, 2009

NEWS: Windows 7 Compatibility Testing

I've been testing Engagement 5.7 on Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit with Office Professional Plus 2007 (32-Bit), Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro (32-Bit), and Internet Explorer 8 (there is a 64-Bit version installed with Windows 7 64-Bit but I use the 32-Bit most of the time). I setup the Windows 7 in a virtual machine using VMplayer 3.0 beta (supports Windows 7 as a Guest OS and multiple display support; the RTM has been released so I would recommend using that one) with Windows XP Pro SP3 32-Bit as the Host OS. I'm using two monitors with 2 GB of RAM allocated to the virtual machine (I'm running 3.5 GB of RAM in my Host) and my Windows 7 virtual was added to our domain. Basically, I tried to setup and use the virtual Windows 7 as my main machine during the testing period.

Generally, I've found Engagement 5.7 to work well in Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit. One item to note is that I didn't get the SQL SP2 incompatibility message that I got while installing on Windows 7 64-Bit beta. Other items I've found are below.

1) While the 2003 add-ins for Word and Excel work (displayed in the Add-ins tab), the add-ins for the Ribbon functionality (displayed in the Engagement tab) don't run properly. My guess is that something isn't working well with the 64-Bit OS.

2) I've found everything to work within Acrobat except when I try to close a PDF from the Engagement binder (right-click and select "Close workpaper"). It appears that the command is lost and nothing happens. So I'm forced to close PDFs through Acrobat instead of the Engagement binder.

3) I've had one instance where the "Pfx Engagement PDF Converter" (available from the print menu) didn't work. I think this was an isolated instance becasue I've gotten it to work several times since.

4) We upgraded our office server and workstations from Engagement 5.0 to Engagement 5.7 while I was testing on Windows 7. So, as a good Administrator I tried to convert the 5.0 binder templates to 5.7 but no luck. I had to do it on a colleague's XP machine.

So my findings were rather positive over the testing period (about 3 weeks). Next week I'm going to move to a new machine with Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit as the Host OS (no more playing around in a virtual world). What issues have others seen when moving Engagement to Windows 7? Anyone out there tested Engagement with Windows 7 32-Bit?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I try to install 5.7 on a Windows 7 Pro 32bit I receive the message that I am not an administrator on this computer and it stops and I click finish. What is the workaround for that?

Rob Smith said...

Install the SQL instance directly from the CD (don't use the autoplay menu that pops up). Then install Engagement using the .msi file from the CD (skip the Setup.exe). If you get the error again while trying to install either of these files, I would try two things.

1) Right click the target file and select "Run as Administrator", or

2) Right clieck the target file and select "Troubleshoot compatibility"

Let me know if neither of those suggestions work.

Anonymous said...

Option #2 worked for me; CCH said that they knew about this error/message occurring and that they did not support Windows 7 but that version 6.1 would. Option #1, by the way, comes up by holding the SHIFT key down and right-clicking, and then choosing either Run As Administrator or Run As Different User. Thanks for the assistance!

Ryan S. said...

Have you had any problems with data not updating correctly in Excel? I've been testing Engagement 5.7 as well and I've noticed that in some binders when opening excel files the data does not populate correctly or at all. This is not all the time, and also seems to appen more in Trial Balances then anything else.

Anonymous said...

Did you get it installed on Windows 7 by choosing "Troubleshoot compatability"?

I purchased a new laptop and got this same error. CCH support said they do not support Windows 7 for Engagement and that we would have to wait until 6.1 comes out to use Engagement. Is this true?

I would really like to get Engagement installed on the new machine. Anyone's assistance would be great. Thanks!

Rob Smith said...

@Anonymous (Dec 24)

Yes I did get Engagement installed using that feature (see my prior posts and Dec 14 comment above). It is also true that CCH doesn't support Engagement on Windows 7 and won't do so until 6.1 comes out. It should have been out by now from what I heard during CCH's User Conference in Oct but nothing has been posted on their customer service web site yet.

That being said, I've been running Engagement 5.7 on Windows 7 Professional x64 for more than 2 months now without any major problems.

Anonymous said...

@Rob S (from Anonymous Dec 24)

Thanks. The following worked for me:

On Windows 7 Pro 32-bit,

(1) Disable UAC entirely
(2) Install Engagement 6.0 (normally)

That did the trick.

Prior to doing the above, I was able to get Engagement installed using Troubleshoot Compatibility (as you described), but it still would not run, it gave me a runtime error when I tried to open the program. I uninstalled and reinstalled with UAC turned off and it was successful.

So far, everything is working smoothly.

Stephen Henderson said...

Thanks, troubleshooting option worked great for me. I also heard 6.1 is coming out very soon so we're waiting to gfrom 5.7 ~ 6.1.

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