Dreamweaver/Contribute crashes when you have IE 7 installed

We have a Windows Terminal Server for our telecommuting developers.  Of course, installed are the typical web development and design suites from Macromedia/Adobe.

We recently upgraded the server to a VMWare Virtual Machine with all the fixin’s but one of our remote users noticed that Dreamweaver kept crashing whenever she browsed to the online help system.

I’m more than a little invested in seeing our VMWare initiatives take off, so I took it upon myself to make sure it wasn’t a VM issue (seeing as that was the most recent and dramatic change to the installation).

I uninstalled, re-installed, deleted, and undeleted everything that had to do with Dreamweaver.  I logged in as myself and as a local administrator.  I trolled user forums and even pinged a colleague to see if he had any ideas (Hi, Tam!!!).

Nothing.

Then I did something I don’t think I’ve ever done; I posted a question on a user support forum, specifically one of Adobe’s official Dreamweaver forums.

In less than a day, some wise support professional from the Adobe team responded with the answer:  IE7 broke Dreamweaver!  Definitely not part of the “Joe Cruz Winning Formula”.

IE7 installs an updated psapi.dll that is in conflict with the online help viewer installed by Dreamweaver (and Contribute 3.11, it turns out).

Adobe has a nice, concise KB article that explains exactly what to do to fix it.  Many thanks to David Alcala from Adobe Product Support, for pointing me in the right direction!

“Dreamweaver crashes when accessing help system when Internet Explorer 7 is installed (opens in new window)“

“Can’t start Contribute after you install Internet Explorer 7 Beta (opens in new window)“

Geeks of War

As you my already know, I am a video game geek.  I wouldn’t go that far, but I certainly asymptotically approach fanboy-ism when certain Sqeenix games are concerned. 

[Final Fantasy XII is neither Final, nor Fantasy, nor number twelve.  Discuss.]

I think I grew up when games that I really enjoyed were scarce. Perhaps I have been conditioned to be overcome by the Shameless Commerce Madness and Hype Machine and driven to viscerally possess the next thing to come out of Japan’s great development houses. In my old age, however, I no longer have control of enough time to play all the video games I want to play, or sample every JRPG that hits the store shelves.

A few years ago, I think after being tragically disappointed by an Atlus Software offering, I decided that I had to be much more discriminating when it came to my almighty dollar.

I started trolling IGN, Gamespot.com, 1Up, and gathering as much information as I could about new releases, reading preview and reviews, and watching in-game footage. That last is most important; it’s too easy for me to get doe-eyed over the introductory cinematics, oftentimes completely misrepresenting what the game actually looks like for 99.9% of the time you’re playing.

So I developed the “Joe Cruz Winning Formula“: the average of the Gamespot.com Editor review and the submitted User Reviews of a game must be 8.5 or higher, else I will not buy it. It has worked pretty darn well for me during the past couple of years.

I noticed something else, though, more recently. I was drowning in a sea of mediocre RPG’s! Velveeta-cloned mind-numbers that didn’t challenge me at all, but just fed the addiction. I made a choice, then, to change the litany of big-eyed, sword-wielding, dragon-slayers, and explore some heretofore un-enjoyed games. Platformers, FPS’s, and Adventure games!

Some games I’ve really enjoyed along the way: Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, Metroid Prime.

Now that I’ve got an X360, I’m tremendously excited about the possibilities of these kinds of story-driven games, in Hi-Def visual bedazzlement, making my eyeballs fall out and my heart fall through the floor in excitement/panic/grief/connection. Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Fable 2, and BioShock, if I ponder them for too long, reduce me to a school-girl waiting for that Boyband song to hit my iPod’s playlist while drawing chisel-tipped hearts around the heartthrobs in the school yearbook.

Speaking of heartthrobs…may I please have Final Fantasy XIII…now?