dalepres

Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 7

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 8:29 pm:

There is no mention of the pgp add in or any other add-in in my Outlook configuration.

You know, this was an upgrade of a PGP version by another version of PGP. The fact that the version 8.x add-in is not removed properly is PGP, Inc's responsibility. You (as a company) need to fix this.

This level of support, or non-support, for a known flaw in your own installation package that you have charged a very high price, nearly three times version 8's price, is shameful and PGP corporation and the management that is responsible for this should be ashamed.

The high number of bugs in version 9 of PGP, and the total lack of support for paying customers, such as charging for access to the knowledgebase, has caused me to lose a lot of respect for PGP. Your knowledge base is information about known bugs and the fixes for them, and yet, after buying the software, you take the attitude like, "Oh, you wanted it to work? Well, that's extra!"

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lunar

Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 12

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:03 pm:

Known flaw?? What you talkin' 'bout Willis?! I don't see anywhere in this wohle forum where some one form PGP says this is a known flaw. All I see are suggestions from people trying to help you for free.

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robert johansen
Site Admin

Joined: 18 Sep 2003
Posts: 1796
Location: Draper, Utah
Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:14 pm:


dalepres,

Since you did upgrade from PGP 8.x, could you check the version numbers of the pgp*.dll files in your %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 directory? Just right-click on each pgp*.dll file, click Properties, click the Version tab and check the version number. If you're running the latest version of PGP 9 (version 9.0.2.2424), the only two version numbers you should see on any pgp*.dll files are:

9.0.2.2424
3.5.2.2424

Also, have you done a search of your system to see if the pgpexch.dll file does exist somewhere? Is there perhaps an Outlook registry key that contains a reference to pgpexch.dll?
_________________
Robert Johansen
Senior Enterprise Engineer / Forum Administrator
PGP Corporation

The answer to your question just might be here: http://www.pgpsupport.com

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dalepres

Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 7

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 5:50 pm:


While I still have to respond to Mr. Johansen's post, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for piping in with your two-cents worth, Lunar. I take it from your being on this forum that you also have a copy of PGP that doesn't always work as promised? Or are you just so infatuated with the product that you hang around here reading the boards? Or perhaps you're a PGP non-support representative using this identity for your more unofficial responses to frustrated customers? Judging by the length of time you have been on these forums, over 2 years, that is my guess.

Yes, it is a known flaw. There are dozens of posts in the forum for this same problem. It isn't new. They know that there is a flaw in their upgrade process that leaves undesired traces of version 8.x.

For "Designed For Windows XP" certification, an application's uninstall must completely uninstall the application. While this is an upgrade, and not specifically covered by the requirement, an upgrade effectively is an uninstall and re-install. The results should be the same. I no longer have PGP 8.x on my PC and yet there are traces of the PGP installation on my PC that are causing other applications on my PC to not work properly.

As for "free" help? I still have a reply by the PGP engineer to respond to, but there is no free help. I am at their mercy and they could easily not reply at all. The documentation for this site clearly states that there is no obligation or expectation of an answer by PGP.

If I want help, I have to pay for support which is not cheap. Once I have paid for a phone incident I can search their knowledgebase and, perhaps, find the solution myself. They'd like that. Me paying for phone support and then resolving the problem by searching the knowledgebase and not taking any more of their non-support representatives' time. Charging for access to the knowledgebase amounts to a "double taxation" since the customer who originally paid for the incident that resulted in the knowledgebase article paid once, and now they want me (and you) to pay again for the same knowledge.

Also, by charging for access to the knowledgebase, they make certain that no one can resolve an issue with the software without paying PGP unless you want to spend weeks waiting for responses here which could never come - There has never been a single reply to the issue that originally brought me to this forum: You can't shred hidden files using the file shredder functions. So there's an advertised feature that doesn't work that I, apparently, am going to have to pay extra to get working.

Again, this amounts to buying the software and then hearing from PGP, "What? You wanted the version that actually works? Well, why didn't you say so in the first place," holding out their credit card scanner. "The working version is $49.00 more."

Last edited by dalepres on Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:20 pm; edited 2 times in total

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dalepres

Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 7

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:05 pm:


Robert,

I have searched my registry for any reference to pgpexch.dll. There were no references found.

I searched my %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 folder and checked the file versions. The files in my System32 folder are not the versions you state they should be; the files are version 9.0.1.2185 or version 3.5.1.2185.

It is a good thing I am an Microsoft Certified System Engineer and Microsoft Certified Application Developer and not an average PC user. Most PC users would not have known how to perform either of these searches or how to determine the file versions -- cha-ching!

Where can I download the free upgrade to bring my version 9.0 to the latest build? And do you expect this upgrade to fix the previous incomplete upgrade? Will it also fix the other problem that I have posted to these forums: that you cannot shred files with the hidden or system attributes set?

Will this upgrade be so reliable and bug-free that I will become confident enough in PGP 9.0 to use it for the purpose for which I spent my money?

I bought PGP 9.0 for the whole disk encryption. How do you expect me, with such an unreliable product and such poor support, to entrust my entire hard drive to this product before both the product reliability and the customer support are improved.

While the two technical issues I have posted on these forums are relatively benign, there are many posts about customers losing their entire hard drive contents as a result of using whole disk encryption!

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Dale's note: Here there was a post by lunar -- who coincidentally joined this forum 2 weeks after Robert Johansen and has now some how stumbled onto my posts after only participating enough over 2 years to have accumulated 12 total posts before today -- stating that he can see that I am frustrated but that most of what I say is rediculous.

Between the time I responded to him and then saved the page transcript, lunar's post had been removed.

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dalepres

Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 7

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:29 pm:


Lunar,

What that I said is rediculous? That software should perform as advertised? That searching the knowledgebase by paying customers should be free? That support for known flaws in the software should be provided free of charge?

Be specific.

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lunar

Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 13

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:55 pm:


Hey forum admin, where'd my last post go?

To be specific dalepres:

Quote:
As for "free" help? I still have a reply by the PGP engineer to respond to, but there is no free help. I am at their mercy and they could easily not reply at all

But you did get a reply, you are getting some free help. I find it ridiculous that you would consider this not to be "free" or "help". Perhaps the real issue is that you're not getting free help the way you think you deserve it.

Quote:
Charging for access to the knowledgebase amounts to a "double taxation" since the customer who originally paid for the incident that resulted in the knowledgebase article paid once, and now they want me (and you) to pay again for the same knowledge.

Did you ever notice that there's not a single KB article on PGP Desktop that requires you to buy support? At least I haven't found one yet. As far as I can tell, the only ones that require buying support are the ones for the PGP Universal server.

Quote:
Again, this amounts to buying the software and then hearing from PGP, "What? You wanted the version that actually works? Well, why didn't you say so in the first place," holding out their credit card scanner. "The working version is $49.00 more."

This is ridiculous because PGP obviusoly doens't do this.

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robert johansen
Site Admin


Joined: 18 Sep 2003
Posts: 1797
Location: Draper, Utah
Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:04 pm:


lunar,

I deleted your previous post, and if I suspect that you're flame-baiting again, I'll continue to delete your posts. There's no need to describe someone's comments/opinions as "ridiculous". Please don't post just to be argumentative.

dalepres,

I can't say whether upgrading to PGP 9.0.2 will resolve your issue, although I would recommend it. Thus far, I haven't been able to duplicate the problem you describe. If I upgrade from PGP 8.x > PGP 9.x, I don't encounter any pgpexch.dll errors with Outlook (and I've done it on many systems). Are you able to provide steps for duplicating the problem reliably? If not, I'll keep trying, but naturally it's difficult to squash a bug if I can't get my hands on it. Any more information you can provide about your system, your version of Outlook, the process you followed to complete the upgrade, etc., would be helpful.
_________________
Robert Johansen
Senior Enterprise Engineer / Forum Administrator
PGP Corporation

The answer to your question just might be here: http://www.pgpsupport.com

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dalepres

Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 9

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:13 pm:


Robert,

I am using Outlook 2003. Steps to reproduct the problem: Double click the install file downloaded for version 9.0 of PGP and run the install. Complete the install, reboot, and start Outlook.

This is not just me. There are many other posts on this topic that I found when I first searched for it.

Again, how do I download the free upgrade?

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dalepres

Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 9

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:31 pm:

Lunar,

In response to your post:

Item 1:

But you did get a reply, you are getting some free help. I find it ridiculous that you would consider this not to be "free" or "help". Perhaps the real issue is that you're not getting free help the way you think you deserve it.
It took almost three weeks to get this far and still the problem is not solved. There is still no response to the first problem I posted which is what led me to these forums in the first place. There is no free help for that one. Like I said, I am at PGP's mercy.

Item 2:

Did you ever notice that there's not a single KB article on PGP Desktop that requires you to buy support? At least I haven't found one yet. As far as I can tell, the only ones that require buying support are the ones for the PGP Universal server. Well, I guess that settles the question of whether you're a PGP employee. How else would you know what's in the paid knowledgebase? I certainly don't know. What I do know is that I searched for help on the problems I have with Shred and the search results listed articles that, when I tried to open, were indicated to only be available to persons with a valid open support incident.

Item 3:

This is ridiculous because PGP obviusoly doens't do this. It is obious that PGP does do this, and it is obvious that you are a PGP employee. I will forward the content of this forum thread to as high a level of management within PGP as I am able to identify.