I've been talking to tech support about my defective Jaws 8 over a long
sequence of phone calls, first to Tier 1 and then, at my insistence, to Tier
2, which led me to John Carson. I had to insist on escalation because the
Tier 1 folks have to run through their sequence of getting you to uninstall
and reinstall, over and over, until your head starts spinning and your land
line phone bill starts to look like a teenager's cell phone bill, and every
time you do what they say and need to call again because their instructions
haven't enabled you to resolve anything, you get another Tier 1 person and
they insist that you go through the same round of uninstalling and
reinstalling, as if there's nowhere to go from there and somehow, as if by
magic, things will be put right during one of these repeated procedures. I
may be exaggerating a little, but it's so frustrating having to go through
the same bits again and again.
So I got escalated up to John Carson, and naturally he had me uninstall and
reinstall, too. In fact, first from my CD and then, when that didn't work
right, from the online file, which I first had to re-download because I
couldn't find it on my computer for some reason. Then he had me do a Windows
Restore so that any changes made over the previous month would be undone in
case such changes might have caused my problems. I doubted that, having
installed nothing more exotic than IE7 recently, but did as he said. Then
reinstalled, again. All the while being thankful that I'd retained Jaws 7 on
my system (I also have a copy of Jaws 6.2, but I never revert to it as I
have done sometimes when Jaws 8 has been difficult. Why go back any earlier
than I have to, is my reasoning.).
Well, he says the next step is that he'll want me to run some Windows
utility that will do a major cleanup of uninstalled software-- I'll bet this
means it will clean out the Registry as Jaws should have done on its own),
and preparatory to doing that (with sighted help, because I'm not handy with
Windows Narrator), he'll want me to uninstall all earlier versions of Jaws
from my computer, and then this utility will clean up everything all at
once, including all traces left behind by regular uninstall procedures.
So during our last phone call, last week, I asked him "John, you know I
couldn't have managed to use my computer at all so many times when Jaws 8
has misbehaved, and been able to uninstall Jaws 8, if I didn't have my good
old Jaws 7. And with Jaws 8 having been so problematic to this point, why
would I want to be without Jaws 7? That sounds a little impractical."
And he said, basically, hey, what's the problem? Jaws 8 is going to work
fine, after we do this stuff. So why would you need Jaws 7 anymore?
Well, forgive me for being skeptical. But since each attempt to fix my Jaws
8 has failed-- the latest is that it won't even install anymore; whether I
try installing it from the CD or from the updated version on the FS site,
the Install Shield Wizard says it can't find what must be a crucial
Eloquence file with a .dll extension and refuses to proceed. So I'm running
Jaws 7 all the time, since last time I talked to him.
I figure the safest thing would be for me to make sure I have the Jaws 7
install file on my hard drive in case the next round of treatment doesn't
work, either. But I have two questions:
1. I may have the Jaws 7 CD among the things in the file drawer where I keep
all that stuff, but I'm not a Braille reader and don't want to go through
all the software CDs in that drawer, putting them one by one into my CD
drive to see what they are. that would be ridiculously laborious and time
consuming. So I'd much prefer just to have the install file in a folder,
ready to execute if necessary. Didn't someone post a message not long ago
offering a whole group of such program installation files for older Jaws
versions? Can someone tell me how to access these?
2. I've certainly installed the latest Jaws over earlier versions, just as
you're supposed to do. But I've never even thought about installing an
*earlier* version when the latest one is on the system. Is this kosher at
all, to begin with, and if so, what are the special precautions to take when
doing that?
Thanks. Sorry the post is so long-winded, but I'm really frustrated and it's
hard to be more succinct in the state I'm in.
--
JFW related links:
JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/
Scripting mailing list:
http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com
JFW List instructions:
To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the
list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the
list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
__________ NOD32 2352 (20070625) Information __________
This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
http://www.eset.com
