Report of a very satisfactory e-bay purchase and after sales care.

[WGB]

I purchased the following EPC + WIS ASRA electronic parts catalogue as well as the complete workshop manual that starts after the 116 finishes and installed it onto my then 32 bit XP computer.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MERCEDES-WIS-ASRA-EPC-SERVICE-SET-LATEST-2009_W0QQitemZ180446910446QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM?hash=item2a037957ee

A week ago I purchased a new Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit computer and attempted to re-install my software.

"Adrigeneral" furnished me with new codes and it unfortunately flopped as it won't work on a 64 bit system.

I installed the Windows XP Virtual machine in my computer as supplied by microsoft and after a couple of hiccups due to me leaving a "0" out of the MAC address it has installed and worked perfectly.

This guy has supported his product and replied to me several times, months after I purchased it all for peanuts and I hope you will support him if you need the EPC as well as covering anything newer than about 1980 as far as workshop info is required.

Bill

 

[BAR]

From all my years experience in IT I have known that Microstuff has made enough changes from one version of Windows to the next, so as to render certain applications useless when upgrading to the new Operating System.

Thje supplier of this software makes a comment that it will work on a clean version of Windows 7.

A clean version means a new installation - or 'full version'. That means either a new PC with Windows 7 installed - a full factory fresh as might be preinstalled when buying a brand name PC (Dell, HP, IBM etc) or a White Box PC that you install a full version of Windows 7 yourself: or an older PC on which you have installed a non-upgrade version of Windows 7 having deleted the older Windows.

The fact that they have given you the technical support to manage your conversion, is just fantastic.

Definitely worth supporting this supplier, if their information is good.

 

[WGB]

He says it works on a Windows 7 32 bit but not the 64 bit that I have.

I chose 64 bit because it allows more than 3 gig of ram which is the limit for 32 bit windows (3.7 gig I was told) and I do photoshop and video editing that can acces the 8 gigs of memory I now have.

Windows 7 in the higher versions has an XP emulation mode and this program installed and ran in that mode with only a couple of small hiccups (It kept defaulting to German but it is easily changed in the menus).

Bill

 

[Michel]

He says it works on a Windows 7 32 bit but not the 64 bit that I have.

I chose 64 bit because it allows more than 3 gig of ram which is the limit for 32 bit windows (3.7 gig I was told) and I do photoshop and video editing that can acces the 8 gigs of memory I now have.

Windows 7 in the higher versions has an XP emulation mode and this program installed and ran in that mode with only a couple of small hiccups (It kept defaulting to German but it is easily changed in the menus).

Bill

How do you find Windows 7 Brother Bill?

I run Vista Ultimate (also 64bit) and I am considering updating my server to Windows 7....

Your verdict please:

 

[WGB]

Windows 7 is an improvement on vista in that it is simplified and a lot of problems fixed.

It runs perceptibly a lot faster - particularly boot up and shut down only take a few seconds. This has been helped by the fact that I have ditched Norton's and moved to Kaspersky.

It uses less resources to run and they have borrowed a few nice ideas from apple including the Task Bar along the bottom which works extremely well.

My problems have been that I have moved up to the 64 bit version so that I could use the extra memory for photoshop and there are a couple of things that have not migrated well.

The first was my EPC+WIS which I have now sorted by using the XP virtual system.

The other is that I do my Nursing Home prescriptions at home using an ancient Laser printer that is compatible with our Surgery Software and I cannot get a 64 bit printer driver for it.

I haven't explored the XP mode with that one yet.

If you have all modern gear a migration to Windows 7 is a no brainer and will work better in an old machine than Vista particularly if you are only using the 32 bit version. A little bit more complicated with the 64 bit version but the change will hopefully future proof me a little more and anyway nearly all 32 bit programs run happily in 32 bit mode in the 64 bit operating system.

Bill

 

[Styria]

Windows 7 is an improvement on vista in that it is simplified and a lot of problems fixed.

It runs perceptibly a lot faster - particularly boot up and shut down only take a few seconds. This has been helped by the fact that I have ditched Norton's and moved to Kaspersky.

It uses less resources to run and they have borrowed a few nice ideas from apple including the Task Bar along the bottom which works extremely well.

My problems have been that I have moved up to the 64 bit version so that I could use the extra memory for photoshop and there are a couple of things that have not migrated well.

The first was my EPC+WIS which I have now sorted by using the XP virtual system.

The other is that I do my Nursing Home prescriptions at home using an ancient Laser printer that is compatible with our Surgery Software and I cannot get a 64 bit printer driver for it.

I haven't explored the XP mode with that one yet.

If you have all modern gear a migration to Windows 7 is a no brainer and will work better in an old machine than Vista particularly if you are only using the 32 bit version. A little bit more complicated with the 64 bit version but the change will hopefully future proof me a little more and anyway nearly all 32 bit programs run happily in 32 bit mode in the 64 bit operating system.

Bill

Hi Guys, I run Windows 95 - any good ? Regards Styria

 

[Lukas]

Hi all,

I work as a sysadmin, so if you want a "professional" point of view.....

Styria: I'd suggest upgrading to at least Windows XP - having Windows 95 on an internet-connected machine is not a good idea: Microsoft don't patch holes in 95 any more, and it isn't really built for the internet and associated risks. XP will run on some fairly old hardware, so an upgrade of the box might be avoidable. You can buy an XP license from computer fairs for a reasonable price these days. Then again, you can get an entire laptop for about $400 brand new.....

Michel: If it is a server it should probably be running Windows Server 2008 R2 (current version), but appreciate that there is a cost involved ($1000-ish for the Standard version). Depending on what the server does, client-versions of Windows can be suitable, allbeit not optimal. For example, if all it does is provide some network drives and maybe some shared printers, then Win XP / Vista / 7 would be fine. If you are doing directory services or email server or DB server or web server, Win server would be the way to go.

Bill: Have not played with Win 7 much yet, but I'm not sure the compatability mode would extend to peripherals. However, there is apparently an "Add Legacy Hardware" bit inside Device Manager that may help - hdwwiz.exe is another way to run it. Failing that, either run the application and printer under dual-boot to XP, or in an XP virtual machine, or upgrade. You can always try to use the XP drivers in Win 7 too, but things may explode.

Re EPCs - I got mine of a different seller, but one that was equally accomodating when I had MAC address issues (had various mobile broadband modems in the computer, and their MAC addresses were being used instead of the computer's NIC). Mine includes the w116 in the EPC, but not in the WIS.