Microsoft, You Nearly Had It Right!

Yesterday, the so-called Wave 3 revisions of the Microsoft Live Essentials were released. The previous revisions were a big disappointment, yet many, like me, continued using the apps, because the initial releases showed so much promise.

Having had a few hours of intense working with the new versions of Live Mail, Live Messenger, Live Photo Gallery, and now, Live Writer, I can see that the wait was worthwhile. It was a transition that almost did not come, however.

When I first saw the release, I immediately wanted to get the upgrades, as the previous revisions had left much to be desired, in many ways being a step backward from the initial releases. Stupid mistakes, that should have been quashed permanently during the cycle from the ‘1st wave’ to ‘2nd wave’, were not.  The install that should have been a cakewalk, was a long, painful, and repetitive mess. I first tried the short download of the ‘stub’, which then continues with downloading the bulk of the application files through the internet. That was continuing with much alacrity, up to the point where the gauge showed the Live Photo Gallery was being installed. During the install of those files, I literally blinked, and the install began its reversal of direction, and my bright outlook started to go away. I next tried this with the large, almost complete, download already on my machine, with the exact same effect. Since I have a 3 Mb DSL connection, and I was doing this at a time when I was getting about 360Mb transfer speeds, I knew that the connection was not the problem.  I looked up the errors, both on the Microsoft site where the applications pointed me, and, after getting the typical Microsoft non sequiturs, also tried my luck at Googling for assistance. Unfortunately, the terse, and improbable answers I got there proved fruitless as well.

I then focused my attention on the applications left behind on my machine. I soon found that the Live Mail application had been rendered FUBAR, with an incredibly inane message about how the application could not start, as there were Calendar files that were damaged, so that using the Mail portion was impossible. This was especially improbable, as I have never used the Calendar functions of the Mail app. I removed all traces of the Calendar app from my personal directory, hoping to ameliorate the problem. No such luck. I then tried to look at the raw mail messages, as I had things that I did not want to have to try and reconstruct. They were readable, if not formatted for ease of use.

Since this was late of evening, and I tend to lose patience quickly after 10 PM, coupled with my lack of clear thinking when my installations are involved, I stopped. I took about five minutes to think what I had done, and what I have found about things like this in the past, and it hit me. It was something I had done once before, during a mini-refresh cycle. In my mind it had taken forever to reach this, but after looking at the clock, it was only 5 minutes. I would save the entire contents of the mail directory, and then completely remove the Live applications. By the way, the Messenger and Photo apps would start, but not connect to the internet. (And yes, I had verified that the Messenger service was up and running fine) the only app that was still working after being partially removed, then rolled back by the Microsoft installer was the Live Writer app – and was I ever tempted to write something right then for publishing!

After removing the Live applications in their entirety, which is the only way possible (Thanks again, Microsoft!), I reinstalled the Wave 3 applications, and watched as the install went all the way through, no backtracking, no other problems. I then copied the mail files back into the proper directory, and all was well.

The new applications show much polish – too bad I can’t say the same for the install routine. Several hours of my time could have been more fruitfully used, had Microsoft simply said that all traces of the old apps should be removed prior to installation.

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None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe