This is probably the end of this thread.
The 29th saw a several-hour session under Easy Assist, and the 30th saw
another one.
The OL expert that worked with me basically gave up, described the
Vista/OL2007 installation as a "known issue", refunded my $49, and closed
the incident as "unresolved." I was left with an OL2007 that worked under
the administrative account, but not under the standard account. I was also
left with a myriad of files that appeared to be temporary work files that I
hoped it was okay to delete. I was also witness to more registry editing
than I had hoped to see in two lifetimes. The expert said he found "many
things wrong" during his excursion through the system, and described how
they could have been incorporated as far back as when Toshiba first
installed the operating system, or possibly when Best Buy did their
"optimization" for $60 which, as I understand it, involved removing a lot of
the unnecessary packages that the manufacturer adds to the system, setting
certain parameters that tweak the system for best performance, and provides
me with a set of recovery disks.
I was forced to give up my hopes of keeping the users separate and
minimizing running with administrative privileges (for its anti-malware
benefits), and I'm trying to run now with a single administrative user.
I'm sure the operating system is unstable -- shortcuts keep getting
duplicated for no reason, and during our school application Windows
"encountered a problem and must close" for the first time (the same error
message we kept getting while fighting the OL2007 battle.)
We're not sure what we're going to do next. We did purchase an
all-inclusive warranty from Best Buy, so we could accidentally drop the PC
onto the street from a fourth-story window. If we just ask Best Buy, I'm
sure they'll tell us to back up everything and use the recovery disks, which
would accomplish nothing if the problem came from Toshiba, or if the disks
include a Best Buy error. We're also considering downgrading to XP, where
everything we were doing before would still work, and maybe even OL2007
would have a chance, but there are things about Vista we like.
Thanks for your support.
Bud
