Vista - Seagate FreeAgent (appcrash) - Vista64 Basic Workaround

Firstly I cannot fathom that a company as large as Seagate cannot afford to employ a programmer to wite a version of Freeagent that is X64 and Server 2008 compatible Secondly what a badly written piece of software anyway

Ok so you already know this software crashes when installed on Vista 64, there is a workaround.

- Install it
- Go into the folder - C:\Program Files (x86)\Seagate\FreeAgent
- Rename the file maxrestore.dll to _XXX_maxrestore.dll
- Now double clicking the taskbar item will open the tools and not crash
- you may need to exit and restart the taskbar app first
- the maxrestore.dll is responsible for the appcrash, I only discovered this under Server 2008 which actually mentioned that the crash occured on maxrestore.dll whereas Vista just says appcrash. After carrying out the above workaround please note that EVERY time you double click the launcher icon in the systray it will give you the error "Application Initialization Failed: maxrestore.dll" just click OK and then you have access to the applications basic functionality.

NOTE: This fix will only allow you to access the basic utilities like setting the time the drive goes to sleep and turning the lights on and off, quite honestly those are the only two functions I require anyway. The "sucky and poorly" written backup functions in Freeagent will not work and I would not even imagine why you would bother using them in the first place. Get yourself a DECENT backup solution like Acronis and be done with it.

A message to Seagate: Get your act together guys