Problems With Loading Dreamweaver On Your New Acer PC Running Windows Vista?

My trusty old PC that has served me well over the last five years finally gave up the ghost of Monday. It refused to boot properly and after eliminating Windows XP as a possible cause I decided it must be a hardware problem. Given the price of a new computer these days, I decided not to throw more money at the old one and bought myself a brand new Acer Aspire M1640, a bottom of the range PC but more than sufficient for my needs.

Then came the task of loading all the programs I can’t work without and top of that list was Dreamweaver MX.

It loaded no problem and when I started the program all looked good. That was until I got to the Dreamweaver splash screen. It got as far as  “initializing files” and then crashed. I tried reloading it, turned off anti-virus software, etc., but still the same problem.

That’s when I assumed it was a compatability problem with Windows Vista. I know others have had problems running older versions of Dreamweaver on Vista machines, but I had managed to load Dreamweaver MX onto a laptop running Vista without any problem (well, there did seem to be a hiccup with tables initially, but that seems to have solved itself).

Assuming there was a conflict, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to Dreamweaver CS3 which is compatible with Windows Vista.

Again, it loaded perfectly and the splash screen appeared after launch, but to my horror the same thing happened as before – it got as far as “initialising files” and then disappeared. And again I’m cursing Windows Vista up and down. Not only does the Adobe Creative Suite which includes Dreamweaver not come cheap, but it is vital to my work and nothing comes close to it for website design.

Then I searched the internet for possible solutions and a couple of posts of forums cauight my eye. One poster with problems had an Acer PC and another on a different forum had an Acer laptop.

It turned out that the problem was being caused by a program that comes pre-loaded with Acers called Acer E-Data Security Management which allows you to encrypt files.

The solution was simple. Uninstall Acer E-Data Security Management via the Control Panel. This I did and hey presto Dreamweaver now loads like a dream.

Hopefully this post might save someone else with a similar problem some time and maybe even money.