March 1, 2007 (revised October 5, 2007)

Numus Moneta and Windows Vista

     The Windows Vista operating system caused a lot of programs to fail, and Moneta was one of them.  The first three issues are the ones that caused Moneta to fail under Vista, and have been addressed in revision 2.0.12, released March 1.   Issues 4, 5, 6, and 7 (which are strictly visual, non-functional) were dealt with in release 2.0.13, released on October 5, 2007.  Sadly Vista also prohibits our self-extracting free upgrades from automatically replacing the old Moneta2.exe file, so we recommend first unzipping the upgrade to your desktop and then manually copying it into the <drive>\Program Files\Numus\Moneta2 location.
 
Critical Vista functional issues that Moneta 2.0.12 fixed:
 1)  The biggest problem for Moneta under Windows Vista was data storage.  Quite simply, what was recommended by Microsoft when Moneta was architected (during the time of Windows 95) and initially released (March, 1999 under Windows 98), was not recommended under Windows 2000, and is now not allowed by Windows Vista.  Specifically, Moneta stored its data as a subdirectory of the program location in the “Program Files” directory.  Starting with Windows Vista, programs can no longer write anything to the “Program Files” directory.  Currently, under Windows XP and all previous versions of Windows, Moneta is distributed between the following folders:
       a)  To facilitate the use of the same Dealer data and Contact data by <>Nomisma or other Numus
              programs, that data is stored at:     <drive>\Program Files\Numus
       b)  The Moneta executable file is stored in the folder:    <drive>\Program Files\Numus\Moneta2
       c)  The main database is stored at:  <drive>\Program Files\Numus\Moneta2\Monetadb<>

   However, starting with Windows Vista, the default locations for Moneta are:

      a)  The Moneta executable file is as always in the folder:   <drive>\Program files\Numus\Moneta2
      b)  The main database is stored in a newly created folder with the path:
              <drive>\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Numus\Moneta2\Monetadb
      c)  To facilitate the use of the same Dealer data and Contact data by Nomisma or other
            Numus programs, that data is stored in a newly created folder with the path:
             <drive>\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Numus

2)  The third-party “database engine” that Moneta uses, the “BDE”, has always been stored (per Microsoft guidelines) in the “Common Files” area under Program Files.  Microsoft has now forbidden that area to be written to, so Moneta now creates a special file (.ini) in the <drive>\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Numus directory to store data which can be used by any conversion utilities for future versions of Moneta, the Moneta2 Data Restore program, and the Moneta2 Data Repair utility.

3)  Due to the new special .ini file, Vista users will also have to download the new versions of the Moneta2 Data Restore program, and the Moneta2 Data Repair utility (should they ever need to use them).  These new versions will have the version number 2.0.12 in their titlebar.

Visual issues in Vista that were addressed in Moneta2 version 2.0.13:
4)  Moneta will now show up in the famous “Vista 3D” view as a full screen application.

5) When minimzed to the task bar, Moneta will now show a thumbnail of its active screen on a "mouse-over".

6)   The “File: Save As” dialog boxes in Moneta are in the new Vista style.

7)  The Moneta icon now displays optimally in Vista functions.

Summation:
      The average user will not notice any differences in performance, but the experienced Moneta user may notice the differences and hopefully the above will clear any confusion caused by the rules changed by Microsoft.  Numus apologizes for the inconvenience to our customers caused by the changes (with which we disagree), but unfortunately are dictated by Microsoft decisions outside our control.   The main functionality changes are caused by Vista’s UAC (User Access Control), and although the user can disable that control, in our opinion Microsoft has implemented a very poorly conceived method to do that – "virtualization" - which involves creating multiple versions of the same files – a sure formula for computer disaster.  To avoid this, we have re-written Moneta.