General Consultant Discussion

A tip/reminder to everyone quoting Sage 100 ERP 2013 (and 2014 soon) upgrades: When you have customers using Windows XP workstations on slower networks: - older Windows XP workstations must be at SP 3 in order for the workstation to install - All older workstations on XP will likely require: .Net 3.5 (Reboot) .Net4.0 (Reboot) Windows Installer 4.5 (Reboot) C++ 2005 C++ 2010 The .Net 3.5 takes the longest (of course varies by machine/network speed) but figure 15-20 minutes per workstation I was caught by this on an ""easy"" upgrades yesterday. This is the same ""easy"" upgrade that took a week of collaborative chasing of the 'Error 1904"". Updated: Added version of C++ as per later comments

Has anyone come up with a way to check that prerequisites are met without actually running the workstation setup? It would be nice if there were an option that could be run on each workstation to update the prerequisites. Often I have customers where there is a roomful of ""heads down"" order entry people and during the testing/install phase I'm not all that interested in interrupting and possibly debugging bunch of workstations. Sage 100 seems to get more finicky about running dual versions and I'd rather avoid having to troubleshoot temporary version conflicts.

@WayneSchulz - Two C++ installs? You are referring to the 2008 VC++ redistributable, correct? Or are there really two different ones? I am thinking of adding to the upgrade quote: ""XP workstations require the following: {list goes here} Any workstations missing any or all of the above will incur an additional $100 charge per workstation."" For the two versions issues: have the customer set up a temporary terminal server for testing the new version. I think M$ still gives you 90-120 days to actually license a TS. Plus its another incentive for them to not put it off.

Yes I don't know the exact C++ versions but in my case every workstation needed two. These are not as bad because they don't require a re-boot. The .Net 3.5 and XP SP3 are brutal timewise. I'm going to do the same thing WRT to the added cost for XP workstation. Problem is that I don't have a good way to tell people how to know if they need pre-requisites without actually installing Sage 100 which I tend not to do until I'm ready to go live. In 99.5% of the cases once I tell people about the need for prerequisites they're going to ask how they can check. To the best of my knowledge Sage does not have a prerequisite checker though I'd love to be proven wrong.

I think it is all in the Prerequisites folder on the Sage 100 2013 installer - other than XP SP3.

.Net version detector (free) http://www.asoft.be/prod_netver.html

Can you think of a way to run one application and detect all the pre-requisites. It might be an interesting whitepaper to develop that could be used as boilerplate to send to an IT Administrator -- ie - step one - be sure you have XP SP3, Step two check that you have these DOT NET, etc

SP3 check My computer properties vcredist requires either registry checks or just try and run the installer

Personally, I assume the pre-requisites are NOT installed. Every XP workstation I've touched has required their installation. The C++ redistributables are 2005 & 2010. There are folders for both in the 2013 Prerequisites folder. Also, I have a checklist of things to ""assign"" to IT, when possible. After spending lots of time updating XP workstations and trying to stay productive in the meantime, I'm adding this to my IT checklist.

Have you tested that by just upgrading to SP3, the other pre-requisites are handled within the service pack?

I don't think prerequisites are added just by installing Windows XP SP3. When I was out at a customer yesterday I had 4 or 5 stations that needed SP3. One downloaded and installed successfully and I still had to go through all 5 of the pre-requisites. It's not as bad if you know to plan ahead and have easy access to all the workstations. The main problem is when you have a roomful of ""heads down"" data entry people and they are unexpectedly offline for four hours as you wait for the prerequisites to install (and it can be longer if you need SP3 to a workstation).

When you think about the downtime, the cost of new workstations and your cost or the cost of other outside people, it probably makes sense for these folks to buy some new workstations considering XP is EOL and will not be secure much longer.

Total agreement @MarkChinsky