Sidekick 99 with Vista 2

• Jul 2, 2007

1
• #2

james33

Technical User

Dec 23, 2000

1,345

IE

Dear gsjohn1207,

I am running Sidekick98 And Internet Sidekick/Sidekick97 (whatever you want to call it) on Vista Home Premium and it appears to work fine.
Sidekick99 is like True Sync so check out the following post:

TrueSync Desktop on Vista issues
thread807-1369448

The secret is to install the program when it asks you where you want to put it during the Install process, in a folder C:\Starfish and if you create that then all should be well!
I would still recommend Sidekick98 over 99....

Regards
Jim

Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort!

 

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• Sep 3, 2007

1
• #3

jimalex

Technical User

Jan 22, 2004

76

Gibraltar

I've now had 6 months of Vista and Sidekick works as well as it did on XP. The only problem I had at the start was that I had to separately tranfer sidekick.ini into C\SKW2\DATA
One odd problem I have now is that I have a spanish keyboard and Sidekick will not take any AltGr+ keys but that is unlikely to bother you. It will copy/paste the key symbol.

I now have laptops with Vista, XP, and Windows 98 : with an external disk I can use Sidekick on all three of them.
jimalex

 

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• Oct 13, 2007

• #4

RubyR

Technical User

Apr 28, 2004

1

US

VISTA & SIDEKICK - PERFECTION
Vista Home Premium & Sidekick 98+99 Patch (DL from a link on this forum) are doing the midnight mambo together PERFECTLY ! ! ! I am a VERY happy camper !
I LOVE VISTA !
Note: Do NOT use the V compatibility wizard. Just install DL and then open all cardfiles ...easy.
Ruby

 

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• Oct 14, 2007

• #5

james33

Technical User

Dec 23, 2000

1,345

IE

Dear All,

Just in case there are any of you that come upon a situation that I have experienced on Vista (Home premium) I will describe it and the solution.

Sidekick starts to load and you get the loading window and after a few of the little blue blocks come up, it freezes and will not go any further.

Do not panic, I have found that this will happen if you have opened a media file that no longer exists.

The solution is to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring up the Window that offers you the option to
"Start Task Manager".
Do the above and then click on that option and then look down the list of PROCESSES for
1. sidekick.exe(if you are running Internet Sidekick) or
2. SIDEKICK.EXE if you are running Sidekick98
Select the process and choose to END it.
That will shut down Sidekick.
Now make sure that no instances of Windows Media Player are running visibly
Then check the list for wmplayer.exe and end that process.

Go ahead and re-start Sidekick.

If this doesn't work, post back here and we will continue our quest for the solution.
There is another freeze situation mentioned in the FAQ pages and I will post this in there as well.
See faq807-5203


Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort!

 

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• Oct 15, 2007

• #6

Sidekicker

MIS

Nov 21, 2006

5

US

I am running Sidekick '98 on VISTA. I had been running Sidekick 2.0 on XP, but the latter program would not run on VISTA. Sidekick '98 runs fine, with one caveat: NOTHING will forward: not calls, not to-dos, not calendar items.

Does anyone have any ideas? After reading the above posts, one thing I am aware of is that I installed the program under \Program files, rather than in C:\Starfish. Could that be the reason things do not forward? Any help greatly appreaciated.

 

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• Oct 16, 2007

• #7

Sidekicker

MIS

Nov 21, 2006

5

US

Sidekick '98 is now running fine in VISTA. I had to reinstall Sidekick in C:\Starfish as James33 suggested (instead of the default c:\programs). Now "To Dos" and "Calls" are forwarding correctly. I am thrilled. I had been looking at many other PIMs, but found none I liked as well as Sidekick; now I can stay with Sidekick!

The only glitch (minor) is that I get some hash characters when I try and enter an appointment directly by typing it in. But if I click on the "Add" icon instead, it works fine.

This is a wonderful board.

 

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• Oct 24, 2007

• #8

letitiashen

Technical User

Oct 15, 2002

15

US

Hi, I am using Truesync Desktop, basically Sidekick. Anycase, I created a directory c:\Old Program Files to put all the xp software into. Then I installed truesync into c:\Old Program Files\Starfish...etc.

After rebooting, it got hung up at the opening page and I had to close the program.

I am not sure what went wrong. I have done this on another vista computer. I installed truesync in another folder outside of program files.

Letitia

 

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• Oct 24, 2007

• #9

letitiashen

Technical User

Oct 15, 2002

15

US

Well, I don't know what to say. I reinstalled it and it works. Letitia

 

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• Oct 24, 2007

• #10

james33

Technical User

Dec 23, 2000

1,345

IE

Dear Letitiashen,

Well I guess the only thing to say is "Whoopee!
Nice to hear from you again.

Regards
Jim

 

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• Nov 25, 2007

• #11

bella99999

Technical User

Oct 16, 2001

5

US

RE >>>Dear All,

Just in case there are any of you that come upon a situation that I have experienced on Vista (Home premium) I will describe it and the solution.

Sidekick starts to load and you get the loading window and after a few of the little blue blocks come up, it freezes and will not go any further.

Do not panic, I have found that this will happen if you have opened a media file that no longer exists.

The solution is to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring up the Window that offers you the option to
"Start Task Manager".
Do the above and then click on that option and then look down the list of PROCESSES for
1. sidekick.exe(if you are running Internet Sidekick) or
2. SIDEKICK.EXE if you are running Sidekick98
Select the process and choose to END it.
That will shut down Sidekick.
Now make sure that no instances of Windows Media Player are running visibly
Then check the list for wmplayer.exe and end that process.

Go ahead and re-start Sidekick.<<<<<

I tried it an it doesnt work....still freezes on start-up...what next

 

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• Nov 26, 2007

• #12

james33

Technical User

Dec 23, 2000

1,345

IE

Dear bella99999 ,

First of all check that there are NO Windows Media programs running and then try the following if that does not work.

Right-click on the shortcut that you use to run it and choose to run it in compatibility mode for windows xp service pack 2

Re-start Sidekick
I still prefer Sidekick98

Regards
Jim

Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort!

 

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• Dec 1, 2007

• #13

james33

Technical User

Dec 23, 2000

1,345

IE

Dear bella99999 ,

Any news?

Regards Jim

 

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• Dec 4, 2007

• #14

james33

Technical User

Dec 23, 2000

1,345

IE

Dear All and bella99999,

It appears that a hidden instance of firefox.exe will stop Sidekick98 + Internet Sidekick97 loading too.

Jim

Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort!

 

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• Jan 7, 2008

• Thread starter
• #15

gsjohn1207

Technical User

Jul 2, 2007

7

US

I started this thread in Jul 07 by asking if SK 99 could work with Vista w/o harm. the responses have been most helpful, and 6 months later I got around to trying.

I tried to install Sidekick 99 on Vista Home Premium, and got a forbidding msg:
"The version of this file is not compatible with the vwersion of windows you're running. Check your computers system information to see whether you need an x86(32bit) or x64(64bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher".

So, I then tried to install Windows 98 (which all on this thread seem to prefer) and was successful. However, I cannot read my SK99 Calendar data w/ SK98. The "to dos" and "calls" are garbled and the "multi-day event" colored bars are missing. A very cursory check seems to indicate that "Contacts" AND "Memos" are okay.

So,rather than solve getting SK 99 into 64-bit Vista, (since I don't need or want True Sync)can anyone help me in converting Sidekick data format from SK 99 to 98?

Thanks.

GSJohn1207

 

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• Jan 8, 2008

• Thread starter
• #16

gsjohn1207

Technical User

Jul 2, 2007

7

US

I'm still trying to install SK99 in 64bit Vista, and ,as the Install Program didn't work (see above), I tried copying the whole installed file from XP to Vista. When I tried to open SK98, I received a warning:
"Cannot find the file \cityinfo.dat which is required."
After hitting "OK" I get "RUNTIME ERROR
Program C:\Starfish\Sidekick99\Program\Sidekick.exe"

The cityinfo.dat is in the DATA folder.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get around this?

I need to get SOME Sidekick onto Vista: either SK99 or SK98 w/ 99 Data. Any suggestions either way would be helpful.

Thanks
GSJohn1207

 

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• Jan 9, 2008

• #17

james33

Technical User

Dec 23, 2000

1,345

IE

Dear gsjohn1207,

First of all you need to check out the FAQ pages here at Tek-Tips
The following ones are helpful and if you read them you will save (in this case) me having to repeat the same solution
;-)

1. Cannot find cityinfo.dat faq807-2337

2. Error Message "The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS programs" faq807-5718

3. This installation had detected that a previous etc etc faq807-2246

I believe a problem I had, where ZoneAlarm6 and Vista were incompatible may have interfered with Sidekick too.
Or maybe not!
I now have both Internet Sidekick and Sidekick98 working perfectly (apart from the forwarding todo problem) on Vista.


Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort!

 

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• Jan 9, 2008

• #18

bluebirds

Technical User

Sep 4, 2002

2

US

I tried installing Sidekick 98 (w/patch) to the C drive and found that in my Contacts folder I could NOT change information in the individual listings -- it would not save the changes.

I have given up on Sidekick --- and I have loved it up until now -- I can't trust it anymore.

I have gone to ACT! 2007 (Vista compatible) on the web (eBay) for under $40 -- it may be overkill, but I have not found anything in this price range that is as good as Sidekick was.

 

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