He guys,
I've been so frazzled I haven't had a chance to do my civic duty and post this warning. There is now a new security update for users of Trend Micro (we have been using Internet Security Pro ourselves) that most of us have just taken with our regular daily updates that is incompatable with AC at least in terms of networking. I kid you not, I just went out and bought a new security package....
I have been literally tearing my hair out for days, since at least last Friday when our networked clients in our P2P set-up would have AC itself, not the whole computer freeze up solid. And usually it was so hard a freeze that task manager could not end the process in either of it's two ways. Laptops, printer that were all confused. Meanwhile I have been messing with my network a bit and so I felt rude call support too much for what even as of Friday they said was probably a network issue, because it was all the laptops that had their paths set back to the main tower and not the main tower itself.
How many times can you reboot your entire network in the proper sequence? Let me tell you, I can now do it in my sleep! So I finally had to call support last Friday because(yeah I know stick with me) I tried to run amazing utilities to try and fix all this freezing and BAM AU froze while running on the main machine! I was scared out of my wits to touch a thing, because what does AU always warn you not to do??? Right, don't touch anything because you will corupt your database, EEEEKKKK!!!!
So eventually the flew my machine and they ended AU and all seems to be ok at least for my data... So I just took delivery of my two new powerful Dells (great deal, tell ya later) and I figured I would try get them up and running and at least perhaps these new strong and clean machines would have better luck. So I couldn't easily put my hands on a back-up copy of 3.6.25 (still offical release for a few days, but not for long...) so I call tech support to make sure what I got from the web would 3.6 so as to not add any confusing and confounding variables to this growing problem....
Well while talking to Jodie about all my freezing and other issues and why I was about to load up my new Dells and hope for the best, she says off handedly, "well you're not running Trend Micro though are you, right?" My heart and my jaw fell to the floor at the same time. Obviously I said, "yeah we are running Trend Micro and so is at least one other good AC user I know, Dr Bert up in Maine is using it too. What are you getting at?" That is when she proceeded to tell me that at least 3 other practices yesterday alone were all freezing up like we were, because of the newest Trend Micro updates.
So the answer is until we hear further is, AC does not like Trend Micro now nor has it liked Norton for quite some time either. So the only two internet security packages that she could definitely recommend were AVG or Macaffee. Well the heck with MCF as it is just about as bloated a pig as Norton is, it too wins the resource hog of the year award. So I just bought and I'm about to install AVG I guess as I need to get this office back up and running.
We have been almost computerless for two days now! As I kept trying to use the one good one to play with firewall setting and checking the router over and over again while playing with all the settings in the laptops too. Everytime I thought I fixed the darn thing and would give the computers back to the girls, no more than a few minutes later one of them would start call; "Paul it's doing it again". I started quoting Daffy Duck from "Duck Season, Wabbitt Season... "Shoot me now, shoot me now, I insist you shoot me now!" So if any of you other trend users are having network and freezing issues in terms of AC please post your stuff here and please call tech support and let them know what you are seeing and experiencing.
In closing this is the kind of stuff I wish there was a AC feedback posting kind of thing, letting folks know about possible issues and "trends" if you catch my drift. I would have stopped this mad go round at least a day ago. Also I know that Jon and AC are sort of at the whimes of these larger vendors just like we all are, but this changing and throwing parts at the thing is the lowest level of repair smarts. What are we all going to do if these last two vendors issue some sort of an update and they mess up AC in some other way? There needs to be a better long term solution to issues like this. My question is what kind of basic rule about Access databases, Windows XP and perhaps all or just p2p networking did trend break here and are users like us able to kind of insist, make them do the right thing and fix these kinds of issues?
Bert really like Trend and we both started using it on our own without talking to one another. I liked it because trend worked with my NetGear Routers and actually showed up in some of the routers screen shots and it showed details about the computers protected with Trend. It was a nice added side benefit. But this just "Sucks" to no end.... Well let me run, miles to go before I sleep my fellow AC'ers....
Paul
