Probably one of the most entertaining things I've come across when installing Eaglesoft on my laptops is their setup.exe's refusal to install if your machine doesn't meet the requirements.
I'm sorry in advance for not having screenshots. My photos are in a sea of thousands of generic-file-named jpeg files and there's no way to easily dig them up. Anyway...
Back in Eaglesoft 16, if you attempt to install the software on a home-version of Windows XP, 7, or any version of Windows 8, you would simply get a message saying "This program is not supported on Windows Vista Home-" or something along those lines. Basically, any Windows OS that is not Pro/Busines/Pre-Windows 8 was considered a Vista machine. The Vista mention was taken out of the error message in Eaglesoft 17; at least if you attempt to install it on Windows 10. It will just say "Your operating system is not supported."
Speaking of Windows 10, I did get Eaglesoft to work on it the brief time I had Windows 10. I was having driver issues with my tablet PC (Windows 8.1 originally) and needed to upgrade out of necessity. Eaglesoft on a Windows 10 PC worked exactly as it did on 8.1 The compliance checker would hang until I force-closed it in the task manager, display scaling had to be disabled or buttons would overlap important things, and if the PC went to sleep or idled too long, it would disconnect from the server and pop up recurring error messages (force close in task manager). On the plus side, I didn't see any problems with using the features I frequent.
Mind you, I mainly just update patient accounts, compile mailing lists, shove things into SmartDoc, and make use of the Messenger. I've never attempted standard operatory use in Win10 Eaglesoft.
Shortly after, though, I had to retire that tablet PC after a blue screen error that corrupted the whole machine (Eaglesoft was not running at the time) and I brought in an older laptop with Windows 10 installed one month prior. Attempting to install Eaglesoft only gave me the error message "your operating system is not supported" and it closed right then and there.
So the straight-to-point version of this:
- Eaglesoft will not install on Windows 10
- it will work on Windows 10 if it was installed on Windows 7/8 before being upgraded to Win10. No clean installs.
- I totally don't endorse upgrading your Eaglesoft workstations to Windows 10 at this time.
If you have a Windows 8 PC situation that was similar to mine and only use Eaglesoft for means outside of operatory use and appointment making (again, I haven't tested either of those), a Win10 upgrade won't do any harm, but at the time of this writing, I doubt you would be in such a situation.
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A fun piece of workaround candy I found is that Eaglesoft won't install if they see that your monitor/display is less than 1024 by 768 in screen resolution. If for some strange, unorthodox reason you have a screen that is less than the requirement in 2015 (I have a netbook that was 1024 x 600), just plug your machine to a larger monitor, run the installer again, and let it complete. You can go back to your smaller screen afterwards and Eaglesoft will run just fine.
Honestly, the program is much more readable on a 1024x600 Windows 7 netbook than it is on a 1920x1080 Windows 8 tablet.
And if you're a dentist with your own practice making plans to go digital right now, it's probably not a good idea outfit your operatories with small tablet PCs.
