Windows Vista Two Vista Home Premium Problems

I bought a new Dell E1505 laptop running Vista Home Premium and I'm having a couple of problems that may be caused by running Vista I could use some help with:

1. My Dell came loaded with several trialwares and most I have been able to uninstall except for Office SB 2003. It asks for the disc to be able to uninstall it but Dell doesn't include the disc. I was on the phone with a Dell tech for an hour and she remotely tried to uninstall it but couldn't. She finally said it must be a Vista problem not allowing one to uninstall the Office trialware without a disc. She was supposed to call back after doing some research but didn't. Does anyone have any ideas, reinstalling Vista is not an acceptable option for me?

2. I cannot locate or open Vista's "Security Center" on my laptop. I think there is supposed to be an option in my Control Panel to open it but I can't find anything. If I use Help and do a search it gives me a link to open it but it won't open.

Do you think it is possible it has become disabled? I did some googling (some of this is over my head) and it mentions something about if Norton was installed, it took over control of your Security Center and if you uninstalled it , it might leave it disabled. If I understood this correctly? Thing is one of the trialwares I uninstalled was Norton, so do you think it could have disabled my Security Center? If this is true, more importantly how would I enable it again? Or am I way off base here and it's something else?

 

Vista Restore Points / Recovery DVD / Office 2003 incompatible

Hi Mccoady,

I got my Asus A8JR pre-installed with Vista Home Premium. I used 20 days to tame it. Perhaps my experience can be useful to you as well.

Vista Home Premium provides Files and Folders Backup, but not System Backup.

For the same environment, Microsoft said to me that they could not repeat my Home Premium problems on their Vista Ultimate. And Microsoft support people didn't understand my problem and couldn't help because they are not accessible to Home Premium (different looks and features). I felt helpless.

Many software that I tried (even under Compatibility Mode of XP Professional SP2 and run as Administrator) could be installed; but unable to run or run smoothly; and COULD NOT be un-installed. My work-around was to get into Program Files to delete the whole folder. And delete the icon from the desktop. (if you experience a reject to find or delete the visible icon on the desktop, go to User Account in Control Panel, and Turn User Account Control off, then try again.)

Or, if you want to go back one installation,

Try checking if you can go back by:
1. Click Start > Control Panel > Backup and Restore Center.
2. Then on the left side under Tasks, click on Create a restore point or change settings.
3. Click on the "System Restore" button.
4. Click "Choose a different restore point" and Next.
5. Select from the latest restore point. If it works and the system is not stable, do step 5 again. Don't jump to earlier restore points. My experience is that it didn't work 100% of my 5 trials. (Make sure you have back up your data and settings. There may be inconsistency in data if you restore C: drive but your data resides in D: drive which is not under the same restore point that you manually created. In this situation, you may consider to manually create a new restore point for both drives before you restore to a prior restore point. But I haven't tried it.)


Further for your Office 2003:

Microsoft and many magazine said Office 2003 is compatible with Vista. Not really. My MS Office is Professional 2003 on Disc 1 with Business Contact Manager (BCM) on Disc 2.

No problem to install MS Office Pro Disc 1. But with only 1GB RAM, sometimes the Outlook 2003 and Word 2003 will quit by itself. 1.5GB has made it better now.

Business Contact Manager 2003, when installing, will also install MS SQL Server 2003 Desktop Edition (MSDE). Unfortunately, MSDE is explicited by Microsoft non-compatible to Microsoft Vista! You can still continue installation but it's very very unstable after installation. Never try the Microsoft recommendation (as of today) to install the replacement (MS SQL Server 2007 Express Edition [MSEE]). MSEE is a huge monster with SP1 and SP2, but still doesn't make BCM 2003 work!