1.) Does Vista have Windows Explorer? If not, what is the Vista equivalent?
2.) Does the Vista Windows Explorer (equivalent) default to hiding the XP equivalent of "protected operating system files"?
3.) Does the Vista Windows Explorer (equivalent) have a Search feature? Is there any appreciable difference in the Vista Search feature from the XP Search feature.
4.) Does Vista have a "Documents and Settings" folder? If not, is there an equivalent and what is its name?
5.) Does Quicken install folders in the Vista "Documents and Settings" folder? In both the "All Users" folder and the folder for each specific Windows user?
6.) Does Quicken install a file named qw.cfg anywhere on your hard drive for Vista users? If yes, where?
7.) Do any of the answers to the questions above differ if you are using different flavors of Vista: are the answers different for users of Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, or Vista Ultimate?
I've played a little with QP2007 > 1.) Does Vista have Windows Explorer? If not, what is the Vista > equivalent?
Yes.
IIRC, yes, and I believe that I promptly edited the folder settings to show all system files, extensions, etc., very similar to what I've done with XP.
Yes. It's much more thorough than the XP Search feature. There's a search window at the bottom of the Start menu, where you can type your query, quite similar to Google Desktop. However, I've been using Google Desktop (advanced features turned off), and it seems to be faster and more lightweight resource-wise. What I'd like to do with Vista is install fewer utility apps and stick with major applications. We'll see how Vista's built-in utilities fair over time....
There's a folder called this, but it's really a shortcut to the C:\users folder. Each user has a subfolder within C:\users, and containing (by default), both user files and profile configuration. It's possible to move most of these folders to an alternate location, but there's currently no free TweakUI for Vista, so you must edit the registry to change the locations. (There's TweakVI, but the pay version has most of the important tweaks, and IIRC, not the ability to move these folders.)
This I'm still figuring out. There are shortcuts w/in C:\Users for "All Users" and "Default User". The shortcut for "Default User" opens C:\users\default. I can't see what "All Users" points to, and the properties isn't telling....
Yes, it's in C:\Program Data\Intuit\Quicken
This I can't answer, having only hand my hands on Home Premium. From what I've read about the different flavors, I would think not. But ya never know.... I'm hoping this will get you started, and that someone who's been using Vista longer can provide more detail.
By this time after XP came out, I think I was probably using it as my main OS. Having recently gotten my hands on Vista, I'm feeling a bit unfamiliar, and I find a number of strange things going on like the disappearance of my Recycle Bin. So I've resigned myself to using this installation for learning, figuring it's going to get good and messed up. Hopefully by then I'll have figured out enough of Vista's idiosyncrasies that I can do a fresh install after a while and be able to switch to Vista full-time. For what I've seen, though, QP2007 runs just fine on Vista. I did finally disable UAC, because it was just too annoying. I'm hoping MS tweaks this feature to be less so, since I would prefer to keep all security measures turned on.
Yes. Vista does have Windows Explorer. It's very similar to the one in XP. It does default to hiding "protected operating system files," and that option is changed in the same way as in XP (Tools | Folder Options | View | Hide Protected Operating System Files). There's also a Search function built into Windows Explorer. There's a Search bar in the upper-right corner just under the Minimize/Maximize/Close icons. That searches under the current directory displayed. If you use that Search bar and it doesn't come up with what you're looking for in the directory you started from, you can click on the Advanced Search option in the resulting Search Results. That opens Vista's full-fledged Search function where you can specify things like Location, Date, Size, Name, Tags, Authors, and Non-indexed, Hidden and System files (you can also get to this point via Start | Search). If you get there via Start | Search, it defaults to searching Indexed Locations. Since I've set my system up to only index my data partition, I had to turn on the "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files" option to find that QW.CFG file you mentioned. Indexed searches are instantaneous, but non-indexed ones take a while. On my system it took about 30 seconds to find QW.CFG in C:\Users\Dave\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\Config. BTW, there's a Search bar on the bottom of the Start menu itself. All of these searches accept Boolean operators.
The Documents and Settings (D&S) folder is a bit interesting. It's there (you have to turn off the Hide Protected Operating System Files option to see it). But, it's really only a pointer to the Users directory (that's Vista's new equivalent). It's directly under the root (i.e., C:\Documents and Settings). D&S exists solely for backward compatibility with earlier programs that want to put things there. I think you have to have be a real Administrator (possibly with special permissions) to access that folder directly. Under Vista, the proper way of getting to those files is via C:\Users\. On my system, I don't even see an equivalent to the old D&S\Administrator folder. Under C:\Users, with normal permissions, I see my profile (Dave), Default, and Public. If I right-click on Windows Explorer and select Run As Administrator, my Users folder shows additional
*shortcuts* (i.e., the folders really don't exist) to the old All Users and Default User folders. All Users does include a folder for Intuit\Quicken. Under Vista, Quicken normally defaults its installation directory to being under C:\Program Files\. In my case, with this particular installation, I've changed that to C:\Quicken (trying to improve compatibility since, I think, Vista has special permissions on objects under Program Files). In addition to wherever you have Quicken's Setup put the program, Quicken also puts files under C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Quicken (which is where I think the shortcuts under All Users really points), C:\Users\Dave\AppData\Local, and C:\Users\Dave\AppData\Roaming.
Whether or not the above is true for all flavors of Vista, I don't know. I'm pretty sure it is. As a reference, I'm using Vista Ultimate.
"John Pollard" wrote in message news:XHbVh.61051$oV.2712@attbi_s21...
Are you sure your QW.CFG is under C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Quicken? First, I assume that in your answer, "Program Data" (with a space) is a typo and should be "ProgramData" (no space). Otherwise, that's a difference between your version of Vista (Home Premium) and mine (Ultimate). I definitely don't have a copy under that directory. Mine's under C:\Users\Dave\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\Config. Again, if yours is where you say it is, that's definitely a difference between Home Premium and Ultimate.
That's a very informative answer. It's always difficult to "picture" such things, but I have a *much* better understanding now. Even then, I will need to re-read yours and Margaret's posts several times to fully grasp the impacts.
Interesting. "Program Data" as opposed to "Program Files"? Do the executible programs generally get installed in "Program Files"? If so, what is the realationship between "Program Files" and "Program Data"? Is "Data" a subfolder to "Files" or are they at the same folder level? Or ... ?
Many thanks Margaret; you always provide good answers.
Well I just searched again to be sure, and here's what I found:
You are correct, "Program Data" should be "ProgramData". Sorry for the typo.... And BTW, I'm running as an Admin with UAC turned off. (Bad, I know, but as I said earlier, this is just a testbed with no real data on it, and all other security measures are in place.)
When I searched previously, I too had to use the advanced search to search C:\ and subfolders. It did find qw.cfg, and I could see only part of the path in the search results. I could see "C:\users". But when I hovered the mouse pointer over it, I got the original path (w/o typo) shown below. Guess I should have actually navigated to the folder, because the file's not there!
So I just now performed the same exact search, and this time, all that came up was a *shortcut* to qw.cfg in "Recent Items", which is C:\Users\mew\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows. Interestingly, there was no reference to any qw.cfg at either the first path I provided *or* your path, David. Anyway, checking out the shortcut properties and choosing "Open File Location" takes me to C:\Users\mew\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\Config. I checked, and sure enough the file is actually there.
I'm not sure why I saw two different paths (see #2 above), but upon further digging, I do see there's a file "qwpkg.cfg" in C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Quicken\Config. I'm *sure* my original search was "qw.cfg" and not "qw*.cfg".
What's even stranger is what I found (#3) when I did the additional search which only returned a shortcut to qw.cfg under recent items. I set it to search both C: and D: (and subfolders) both times, so I don't see why I shouldn't see the original file and the shortcut. Nevertheless, repeated searches continues to show just the shortcut now, and not the file ... but the file is really in the folder where it should be.
Oh well. I think I will turn off Google Desktop Search and configure Vista's built-in search to index my files so I can better test Vista's search feature. GDS couldn't find qw.cfg *at all*, though it works very nicely on my XP Pro machine.
At least it looks like both Home Premium and Vista do store qw.cfg in the same location, although multiple searches have turned up different results.
As David pointed out, I made a typo. The directory is actually C:\ProgramData, and it seems to contain folders of application settings like what we see under "Documents & Settings" in XP. C:\Program Files is an actual folder containing subfolders for installed applications. I navigated to C:\Program Files from "Computer". Depending on where you are, you *can* see a shortcut for "Program Files".
Now I'm running as an Admin, and I've turned off UAC. So I see all those shortcuts (distracting in a way), that David mentions. But then again, my purpose is to see how the OS runs from the inside out, before I layer back UAC and try to run as a plain old user.
I've picked up a few books on Vista hoping to get at least a rudimentary grasp of the OS before buying it. Well, "picturing" things w/o having an installation to dig around in and play with can be somewhat unproductive ... or at least confusing. So I don't know how you feel about checking about books, but I've found O'Reilly's "Windows Vista in a Nutshell," Paul Thurrott's "Windows Vista Secrets," and David Pogue's "Windows Vista - The Missing Manual" all to be quite good. And all are substantially discounted at Bookpool.Com, too. :-) I've just been reading little bits here and there of each and noodling around with Vista HP, not in any hurry to migrate ... so far. :-)
Y'welcome John. Thank you for your kind compliment! :-)
Am I right that both of you are running as admins?
If you were running as a limited user (is that a legitimate term for Vista?) - as a non-admin user, if you like; would you be able to locate "qw.cfg". Would you be able to delete it?
No. I'm running under a standard Vista user account with User Account Control (UAC) turned on (default). See
formatting link
I finally remembered the actual term for the "shortcuts" to those old, XP-style directories: they're "junction points." Basically, they're a way for the system to automatically find things from the old-style directory structure. For instance, the D&S junction automatically forwards all references to D&S to the Users directory tree. Here's a good link about junction points:
formatting link
That link includes a list of all the junction points in a fresh Vista installation.
Regarding the QW.CFG file, running as a standard user with UAC on, doing a Start | Search | Advanced with Location set to the C: drive, "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files" checked, and (file)Name of qw.cfg, gives me three results: 1) the qwpkg.cfg Margaret referenced in the Quicken's installation directory (why, I don't know), 2) the qw.cfg file, itself, under C:\Users\Dave\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\Config, 3) and a shortcut to that qw.cfg file.
For Margaret: the easiest way to find the path is just right-click on a Search result and select Properties. You can also right-click somewhere on the Search Results pane, select Sort By | More and check the Folder Path box (there's probably a better way to get that attribute showing, but that's how I did it).
Margaret and David have given you some excellent answers. Maybe I can add a little and fill in a couple of gaps.
First, I've used only Vista Ultimate x64 since Vista "went Gold" about November 1, except for a few excursions into Vista Ultimate x86 (the 32-bit version) when trying to troubleshoot some problems (like my infamous problem of trying to install R3 back in January). Since I have only one computer, I don't get a chance to experiment much with different varieties of Vista - or of Quicken: I've used only the Basic version of Quicken 2007. Also, since there's just me here, I haven't had to learn much about User accounts, permissions, networking, and several other topics. But Vista's UAC has forced me to learn more about permissions than I ever had to know before.
To me, Vista feels very much like WinXP Pro. Some differences between x86 and x64 are more significant than those between WinXP and Vista. Rather than confuse the "Vista" issue, I'll try to put some thoughts about 64-bit into a second Reply to your message.
See further comments in-line...
Yes. You won't notice much difference at first, but there are significant differences under the hood.
Same as WinXP. As an experienced user, one of the first things that I do after installing a new WinXP or Vista is go to Folder Options and make 3 significant changes: Choose "Show hidden files and folders", UNcheck "Hide extensions for known file types", and UNcheck "Hide protected operating system files". Oh, and also, on the General tab, Single-click and "Underline icon titles only when I point at them".
Greatly improved! One of the big selling points of Vista. Trouble is, before it can realize its full potential, it must first Index your whole hard drive - or at least, the parts that YOU use the most. Since I have something like a million archived items (mostly emails and newsgroup posts - and those are the places I'm most likely to search), it took several days of the indexing service working in the background to build my index. (And then I lost it and can't figure out how to turn Indexing back on - but that's a whole other story.) During these first few days after installing Vista, many users are frustrated by delays caused by Indexing, even though it is supposed to be working in the background and during times when the computer is idle. Those users report that their newly-installed Vista is very slooow; after the indexing is done, it speeds up considerably, but we seldom hear about that, of course.
As the others have said, Vista has generally dropped the default folder names with spaces in them (My Documents, My Pictures, etc.) and replaced them with shorter versions with no spaces (Documents, Pictures). For backwards compatibility - and to compensate for even new programmers whose developers haven't gotten the word - Vista has Junction Points that accept the old folder names and "forward" any requests to the new folders.
Since I have limited experiences with multiple users, I'll let the others handle this. Practically all of my "stuff" is in C:\Users\RC or C:\Users\All Users.
Yes. I have a single copy at: C:\Users\RC\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\Config\qw.cfg
04/17/2007 10:55 PM 1,024 QW.CFG
There's no such file in my E:\QuickenW folder, where Quicken is installed.
Since I've used only Vista Ultimate, I'll defer to those with experience with the other versions. But I think that, like Quicken Basic, all the functionality that we need to run Quicken is in ALL versions of Vista.
As a bit more data for this branch of the discussion...
My C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Quicken subfolder has over 41 MB of files. That's in addition to the 60 MB in E:\QuickenW (excluding my .qdf, etc., files and BACKUP folder). And the 330 KB in C:\Users\RC\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken.
It's going to take a long time to figure out all the relationships between all these scattered repositories of Quicken stuff!
Good point about the versions. I forgot to include that information in my other messages. For the record, I'm running on an x86 architecture using Vista Ultimate (32-bit) and Quicken 2005 Premier.
Thx RC, particularly re your x64 comments. As I do have x64 hardware, I'd like to make sure all my peripherals and apps are compatible with the x64 version before I move to it. Are you using Vista x64 as your main Windows installation?
As I said in my other Reply, some of my experiences with Vista have more to do with the fact that I'm running a 64-bit version of Vista. In many ways, the differences between 32-bit and 64-bit are more significant than those between WinXP and Vista. (To cut down on typing, I will often refer to the
64-bit versions of both WinXP and Vista as "Win64".)
Now, about 64-bit. As you probably know, 64-bit hardware will run 32-bit Windows/Vista just fine; you probably won't even notice any difference. Also, 64-bit WinXP or Vista will run all 32-bit software - again, you're not likely to notice any difference. (But 16-bit software, like my beloved
20-year-old WordPerfect Office Calendar, won't run at all in 64-bit Windows. That old software will run in 32-bit Windows, thanks to some built-in translation, which someone else will have to explain. And, of course,
64-bit operating systems or software cannot be installed on 32-bit hardware.) So, if you are running only WinXP Pro or Vista x86, even on a
64-bit computer, none of this discussion applies to you. And if you started fresh with WinXP x64 or Vista x64 on a new 64-bit computer and accepted all the defaults when you installed Quicken and other software, then you should not even notice the following complications.
But if you installed WinXP x64 or Vista x64 onto your 64-bit computer that had already been running 32-bit Windows, you probably carried over existing applications and data files from your 32-bit days. And if you chose (as many of us did) to add 64-bit Windows to dual-boot with your 32-bit OS, then you likely share my discoveries and frustrations.
When I first installed WinXP Pro x64 a couple of years ago, I noticed that the "C:\Program Files" folder was still here, as always, but there was also a new folder: "C:\Program Files (x86)". Since that new folder, with "(x86)" appended to the name, never appeared in 32-bit Windows, I assumed that this was where 64-bit programs would be installed. After installing several applications in my new x64 Windows, I was confused because they kept going into PF86. (Let me refer to those two folders as PF and PF86.) Often, I wound up with programs such Office in BOTH PF and PF86. :>( Several months later in a Microsoft newsgroup, I learned that my assumption was wrong - by 180 degrees!
When running 64-bit Windows - whether WinXP x64 or Vista x64 - all installations of 64-bit applications should go into Program Files. But
32-bit apps should go into the new Program Files (x86) folder! The term "x86" is meant to refer to the 80x86 family of Intel microprocessors, which means practically every PC we've used up until now. Since those PCs have all been 32-bit, the term "x86" translates to "32-bit". They could have used "x32", but they didn't. And "x64", naturally, means 64-bit operating systems and the apps written for 64-bits. So far, there are practically NO
64-bit apps, so the Program Files folder in Vista x64 should probably still be empty. ALL the software installed in Win64 so far should be in Program Files (x86).
There is not yet a 64-bit version of Quicken. There may never be one. If you are running Vista x86, it expects to find qw.exe in C:\Program Files\Quicken. But if you are running Win64 when you install Quicken, it will, by default, go into C:\Program Files (x86)\Quicken.
All that's OK if you are running only one version of Vista. But if you are dual-booting both x86 and x64 versions, and running Quicken from both of them, then you must either (a) install Quicken twice into two different locations and try to keep all your tweaks and data files synchronized between them, or (b) install Quicken twice into a single location. I've followed my already-establish practice of (b), installing Quicken into E:\QuickenW, rather than into a subfolder in Program Files; I can access this single installation from either Vista x86 or Vista x64. (But I've not yet rationalized my several installations of MS Office 2007; its half-gigabyte of files are duplicated in several locations on my hard drives and I haven't come up with a good solution to sharing a single installation.)
This new PF86 folder can also be a problem for users upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows. The operating system itself cannot be "upgraded". Hardware and drivers differences are so great that we can't install any
64-bit OS while booted into a 32-bit OS - and vice versa. So we can't just upgrade from WinXP Pro SP2 to WinXP x64 or to Vista x64; we must do a clean install. That takes care of the OS transition, but then all the apps must be installed again in Win64. If our old hard drive has survived the transition to Win64, then it will still hold the PF folder - with all those
32-bit programs that should now be migrated to PF86. They will still run as before from the PF folder. There will be no problem until Win64 needs to load special drivers to handle 32-bit programs but, because the files are not in the special PF86 folder, the special handlers won't be loaded. I've not encountered such a situation, so I don't know what problems might be lurking, but we must be aware of the potential for future conflicts.
For myself, I have been using a "generic" folder (E:\QuickenW) for Quicken for many years, since before the PF folder was introduced (in Win95?). For years, I've been dual-booting multiple versions of Windows. The 32-bit versions and 64-bit versions of Windows and Vista are happy to install Quicken (again!) into that same E:\QuickenW folder. (Dozens of times, as I've updated Quicken most years, and as I've re-installed Q2005, 06 and 07 several times during the Vista beta.) Now I can start Quicken, no matter which version of Windows or Vista I'm running and work on my single Quicken "file".
But I don't use such top-level folders for most of my applications, such as Microsoft Office. I typically direct those to my Drive E:, but let them install into their default subfolders (E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12, for example). When I install them from Win86, they go into PF; when I install them again from Win64, they go into PF86. Of course, I can "guide" them into PF instead, where they will override the existing copies of the same files, thus saving a half-gigabyte or so of space and allowing me to "tweak" them to my preferences just once. But then Win64 thinks they are 64-bit applications. This has not created a problem yet - but I don't know what the future might bring.
Most of these problems will occur only during a transition from Win86 to Win64. For computers that dual-boot both 32-bit and 64-bit systems, the problems will continue, at least for a while.
Microsoft could have avoided much of this confusion by letting Win64 continue to use PF for 32-bit applications and create a new "Program Files (x64)" folder for 64-bit apps. But they went the other direction. The wrong way, in my opinion. Too bad they didn't ask me first. :>(
Sorry for running on and on, John This is a 64-bit question, not a Vista question. Most Quicken and Vista users will never see any of these problems. ;
See my latest tome. It goes on and on about problems of mixing x64 and x86. Yes, I'm using Vista Ultimate x64 as my main operating system and seldom boot to anything else since Vista "went Gold". Since focusing on x64, I've had no significant headaches.
A year ago, in the midst of the Vista beta, there were lots of complaints about missing hardware drivers and incompatible software. By last fall, though, most of those complaints had disappeared. The RTM version of Vista x64 has not given me any problems with either hardware or software (except for the problem I reported here with updating Quicken to R3, but even that has now been solved) since I reinstalled it on my upgraded motherboard in December.
Of course, a couple of the earlier problems were solved the drastic way. I got tired of waiting for Creative to produce drivers for my old Sound Blaster, so I retired that and used the Realtek audio on my EPoX motherboard. I'm not a gamer or audiophile, so 6-channel sound (on my 2.1 minimal speakers) is fine for me. The Realtek drivers are not on the Vista DVD, so there was no sound immediately after Vista Setup finished. But on my first visit to Windows Update, the drivers were automatically downloaded and installed; I had sound within 5 minutes of finishing the Vista install. My All-In-Wonder 9600 video card had native drivers; so does my newer ATI Radeon X1600 Pro, a PCI-express card. The TV tuner function on the AIW never worked with either Vista or with WinXP x64 - and AMD hasn't promised that they ever will. I've added a couple of non-ATI tuners; neither Hauppauge nor Pinnacle software works with Vista x64 yet, but I can see TV on several channels (on my antenna) by using the Media Center built into Vista Ultimate
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 did not work with Vista until the final betas. Nero didn't work until just about RTM, and later versions work better; get at least version 7 Enhanced. Quicken and TurboTax gave me no trouble(except for that R3).
As you can see, the success of peripherals and apps with Vista is hit-or-miss. Most stuff works very well; some works with glitches; some doesn't work at all. Whether YOU will have problems depends largely on WHICH stuff YOU want to use with it. I expect though, that well before
2008, all these initial obstacles will be behind us.
R. C. White wrote about differences between Vista x86 & x64 plus hw drivers, software, etc.....
Thanks for all this info, RC, and for taking the time to type it! This is very helpful, and I'll tuck it away for the day when I feel ready to move to Vista x64.
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