Question: “I can’t login to my VISUAL Manufacturing system after a recent Windows 10 Update. What can I do?”

Answer: The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update v. 1709 has a known issue with ALL versions of VISUAL Manufacturing\ERP except for version 9.0.2

This is a known issue with Windows10 v. 1709 and it is resolved by Infor’s release of VISUAL 9.0.2. While there have been several potential “work-arounds” for this (listed below) none of them have really provided a good solution. Ultimately, your options are:

  • Downgrade to Windows 7. This is not ideal as Windows7 is already quite old and virtually all new PCs will come with Windows 10
  • Upgrade to VISUAL v. 9.0.2. This would allow you to stay on the VISUAL ERP platform but upgrade to the most recent version. Your VoxISM Rep can review with you what this involved. Vox has performed hundreds of upgrades and have supported VISUAL customers since 1998 so we have a tried and true method to allow you a smooth upgrade
  • Consider Migrating from VISUAL to Microsoft Dynamics NAV. VISUAL, while a stable product, is still based on relatively older technology. It still has the Gupta Team Developer runtime at its core. Microsoft Dynamics NAV however is fully integrated with all Microsoft products, comes with a Web client right out of the box and can be accessed from any mobile device (phone, tablet, iPad, etc.). If you are considering investing in upgrading VISUAL you should also look at the options for migrating to NAV. Again, your VoxISM Rep can review with this.
  • That being said, here are list of “potential work-arounds” that people have posted. While they have not resolved the issues at most of our customer sites you may feel free to try them yourself.
  1. There is a possible fix indicated by a user on the VMIUG site. You can try it and see if it works for you:
  • Right-click into your VM shortcut’s Properties and select the Compatibility tab.
  • Check-off “Override high DPI scaling behavior”
  • Check-off “Disable fullscreen optimizations”
  1. There is a Registry “fix” that can be done that claims to allow you to choose when to download and install updates (like they have in Windows7) … You can try the steps in the following link to see if it works for you: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-automatically-windows-10
  1. Under the Security and Updates section of Win10 you can specify a Delay (or Pause) for applying feature updates, this will allow you to delay it only for a short period of time but it will delay the update. It is unknown if you can do “multiple delays” but it might be worth trying.
  1. If the update has already been applied, then you can see if you can roll it back or restore from a previous known good state – we have had one customer that had success doing that. The uninstall of the KB updates do not work however.
  1. If you have a Terminal Server (or if you have a physical server capable of running an additional Virtual Machine to use as a Terminal Server) you can have users run Visual from it. It would be running Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2 and you would likely need to get the licenses to run Terminal Services (now called RDS or Remote Desktop Services) but it would prevent you from getting this “Win10 issues”. It would also give you the added benefit of remote access to Visual if needed.
  1. You can try the steps listed in the link below to start up Hyper-V on Win10 Pro PCs. Essentially it is like the old “XP Compatibility Mode” we had with Windows7 Pro – you basically create a Virtual Machine “VM” on your Win10 PC and run Windows7 on it and Visual from within it. I actually still have the WinXP VM running on my Win7 laptop which I have to use to support one customer – it has not caused me any issues. I have not had the opportunity to try it with Win10. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/quick-start/enable-hyper-v
  1. The last option (though not advisable) is that the Win10 issue only seems to affect normal Visual users. The SYSADM user does not seem affected by it. So, in theory, you could have people use Visual under the SYSADM userid. Again, this is not advisable as then everyone would have full admin rights to Visual but if you just got hit with it and you are down (and cannot try the steps listed above) then this might provide you with a way to keep running until a better resolution can be made.