Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Upgrading to 5.1 for DUMMIES

I would love a step by step guide to upgrading to the new beta version..The instructions on the site are vague..it would save a lot of calls to support and save users a lot of time from having to call and ask!

I would recommend that you put the installer program on a shared folder on the server. This way it is on the main drive of the main machine but accessible to all of the other computers.

This is a good time to make sure you have all the microsoft updates installed if you have your computers set to manual install (good idea so the computer doesn't randomly restart because it installed an update without your consent.) Adobe reader, flash and logmein have also done recent updates as well. I would do all updates and restart the computer prior to AC install. Make sure the computer is not corrupted by the OTHER updates before you begin the AC update.

1)Back up your system. (The upgrade will back it up anyway, but, it is better to be doubly safe.) Make sure you have enough space if you have small drives on your drives. You should have about at least 1 Gig of free space.

2) Turn off virus protection (not always necessary but a good idea) including spybot, or other root programs.

3a) Double click the installer program. It is similar to prior V4 and V5 versions, it unpacks some programs, asks whether it is a full or client install and then proceeds to check the microsoft background programs prior to reaching the actual AC installer.

3b) It may require you to click OK for anything that is not installed. When you get to the AC installer, it checks to see if there is enough room, then you click the EULA agreement, state that it is for one or all persons on the computer, then proceeds.

3c) It may pause to have you exit other programs. I have done this with exiting others and without ("ignore") but it is probably safer to exit other coexisting programs in memory. It is probably necessary that you do NOT have Amazing Charts prior version running.

4) While the main machine is installing AC, I would go the the other machines and start the installation process going on them. I often have 4 installations going on simultaneously after the main computer has been updated. It's a not a bad idea to make sure the main computer goes through so the other machines are updated while you have to roll back the main if there is a problem (unlikely and I didn't do this but...)

It takes a while especially near the end to add all of the final components in to be installed.

It does not require that you restart the computer at the end of the install procedure. I will usually make sure everything works (log in) and it might not be a bad idea to restart just to reset everything.

Make sure every computer connects and you are off and running.

Did I miss anything?

Oh yeah, The first day I had a backup error. It required me to log in under the advanced settings control so that it would send a copy to another computer. This went easily, and I see that the backup went fine yesterday.

Can't wait to upgrade at the other office because backups don't happen automatically there despite all the settings being done on both the AC automator and backup program.

Thanks DoctorWAW for the detailed instructions..looking forward to the upgrade...will report how it goes!