FM 8 upgrade woes: some solutions

[Emily Berk]

Thank you for the suggestions, Robert.  Thing is, I did not "decide" 
to convert to FM 8 because FM 8 does not actually export files that I 
was able to read using FM 7.  I was forced to use the trial version 
of FM 8 when my colleague was unable to gen his FM 8 doc on the date due.

I understand that he was been able to do it up until the 
weekend.  His book file must have gotten trashed within the last week 
or so.  In other words, the timing simply sucked.

I guess I'll go patch my FM trial, but I don't think the problem is 
only with the trial version because this problem originated on the 
full-fledged version.  (Guess my colleague might want to check into 
upgrades too, huh?)

For my work, for now, I'm sticking with FM 7, which also has its 
problems, but is running on my XP machine and crashes MUCH less frequently.

-- Emily

At 07:43 AM 12/23/2008, Shell, Robert wrote:
>Dear Emily:
>my commiserations. My rig: Vista Professional with 4 gigs ram.
>
>I converted to FM 8 after Vista upgrade and had quite a few of the problems
>you mention. It took me a week to sort out.  I too missed my Xmas market. I
>too was misled by a page number, but there was nothing wrong with the page,
>although the error message was consistent.
>
>Some lessons I learnt
>
>1. Never convert to a new version of anything under deadline.
>
>2. Never test any Adobe product with "Save as .pdf". "Save as .pdf" seems to
>work only with a single file. Always go for the postscript route. Goodness
>knows why Adobe called their printer "pdf converter" instead of "postscript
>converter", however, I was again taken in. This particular problem goes back
>to the days of PageMaker. I regard Adobe as a top of the line corporation
>and I am sure they will sort it out, but when? .... I would love to know how
>many person hours are lost globally on this wonderful program's output
>stage, but I digress
>
>2. The FM 8 trial came with a partial distiller which seem to hang around
>even after the trial was removed.
>
>3. There are three major FM 8 patches which have to be installed. The last
>one was difficult and had to be done twice. Go to the update window and keep
>on updating until all is updated.
>
>4. After the three patch update (which cleaned out my ADSL monthly account),
>I inserted the FM8 CD and did a "repair" ; sounds like voodoo, but that was
>the thing that worked. The page problem disappeared.
>
>p.s. If you have Vista and a spare flashdrive, make use of Vista's
>superfetch procedure: uses the flashdrive as extra memory. Works fine with
>FM8 and distiller.
>
>Robert Shell

Emily Berk
http://www.armadillosoft.com/blog