Epic 5.3 problems with Windows 7 (S1000D)

[ptc-4615787]

Hello everybody,

I use Epic 5.3 M010 to create and manage Data Modules in accordance with S1000D.

Our company recently passed from Windows XP to Windows 7 so we need to reinstall the program, but i'm having some annoying issues.

The program seems to open fine the documents, you can modify various fields without problems and see all the tags, but when you try to modify some particular attributes with the CTRL+D command (i.e. illustrations and issue date/number) the program crash and you need to restart it forcedly. I've tried to change the .dtd and schemes associated to the documents but the problem is still here. This issue cause the impossibility to modify correctly the documents.

I've read that Epic 5.3 is not officially certified for Windows 7, but that some users can use it without problems, so i wonder if it's a problem of wrong settings.

Anybody have some clues to solve this issue?

Thanks

[GarethOakes]

M010 is an extremely old release, have you tried a newer maintenance release in the 5.3 series? The most recent release is M220, which is 21 revisions past what you're running, and they may well have fixed the problem somewhere along the way.

[ptc-4615787]

Thank you Gareth. I'm not very familiar with the upgrade process of Arbortext Editor. I suppose that it's not a free upgrade and i should get a quotation for the new maintenance release, is it correct?

[TimPhelps]

If you have a maintenance contract with PTC, then the upgrade from release to release is available at the PTC website. Note version 5.3 is not certified (has not been QA'd) on WIndows 7.

[GarethOakes]

Unfortunately if you do not have active maintenance then it is often cheaper to just buy the software again than renew maintenance.

BTW, I just had another thought but what about using Windows XP Mode under Windows 7? This would allow your current version of Epic 5.3 to work inside a virtual Windows XP environment, meaning you could avoid the crashes you are experiencing.

[ptc-4615787]

I've already tried the compatibility mode but i'm having the same issue.

In addition, the program shows the following error message when it's opening and i don't know what it means:

[A30479] CMS exception: adaptor initialization not succesful

LibraryConfigPath parameter is not set in site preferences.

BTW we've downloaded the trial version of 6.1 and seems to work fine....maybe the easier way to solve the issue is to get this new software.

[GarethOakes · Accepted solution]

Windows XP Mode is something entirely different from compatibility mode. It allows you to run a VM inside your Windows 7 environment of an actual Windows XP machine.

If you are able to upgrade to 6.1 then I'm sure that will be the most sane path forwards.

For the CMS exception problem it sounds like an issue in siteprefs.xml, I assume you are using a CMS adapter?

[ptc-4615787]

Thank you Gareth, we've downloaded the Windows XP compatibility program from Microsoft website and, even if it's a litle bit tricky, i confirm you that our old Epic works fine using this method....anyway we are now planning to upgrade to the 6.1 version.