I've had a few problems with Windows Vista (lately) and searched all over the internet, including Microsoft's site for answers.  It took awhile, but the problems were solved.  I'll share the fixes here.

File Associations

Recently, I updated my computer by purchasing Adobe Photoshop CS4 (I'll just call it CS4).  I unistalled Photoshop 7 (yes, it was old) and then installed CS4.  The program worked fine.  The problem was, I could no longer right-click a photo and edit it in CS4.  Instead, I would have to open CS4, then open the file with CS4 in order to edit. 

I followed Microsoft's step-by-step instructions to fix the problem and they didn't work.  Not wanting to pay Microsoft a significant amount of money for person-to-person tech support, I searched online for an answer.

After looking over many websites and posting questions in forums and even Activerain, someone contacted me with a solution.  There's a free program called OpenWithAdd which allows a user to add a program to the right-click list to "open with" in Windows Vista.  If you have this problem, check it out, my CS4 now edits photos when I right-click them.

User Account Controls (UAC)

I installed a program and everytime I tried to run it, I would get the message that "You must be an administrator to run this program".  If you're already an administrator, then why would the message appear?

Here's a fix.  Download the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 directly from Microsoft.  You can try following the directions on that same webpage, but there's another place with a better explanation how to fix the problem.  The techrepublic blog has step-by-step instructions AND illustrations to help you with the install process.  It's still a little tricky, for us non-computer whizzes, however once it's running properly those "You must be an administrator" messages will disappear.

Good luck!

Mike Bates

Hawaii real estate