Apologies - v long post
Caveat 1 : Windows experience only
Caveat 2 : I’m no expert in BT software and have no insider knowledge
Caveat 3 : 2+2 = um... 4 or 5 or -1 or a red herring so don’t get too hung up if I’m wrong
Caveat 4 : It seems that the mechanism of accessing the Dashboad via the desktop App has changed for 20.1.6 and is now via the cloud icon in the “hidden icons” section. You may not like this but if it worked then you’d just have to live with it. Dashboard like features appear to be available via the cloud screen “Open Preference” option though as I fail before this is enabled I cannot verify this. I probably won’t like it either when I can but ...
So keeping the above caveats in mind could this be what is happening
1. In general for most people, once past the Windows Defender hiccup, the installation did not report any direct errors. It got rid of the old version if any and copied over the new files and kicked off an initial process. Any errors only came when you tried to use it.
2. For some people all seems to have worked (supported as such by a statement from the BT Mod and various contributors reports from their contact with the Helpdesk) - the lucky few/many (your choice)
3. For many people accessing their files in the BT Cloud via a browser has shown issues (ie. failed) but not for all files and not for all users. My own experience is that some bits work fine, other bits did not (With the ”Error We are experiencing some technical difficulties. Please try again later” message being displayed) and then they did and then they didn’t. Sometime it is consistently erroring sometimes not. This is all BT server/ cloud side so nothing to do with whether you have the App installed or not or if it works or doesn’t. This in itself is a serious issue. We need to be able to trust the BT Cloud with successful accessibility being in the 99% + region across all time periods especially any business users (typical SLAs etc).
4. For many of us the initialisation process fails. Both after the install and whenever we try again by clicking on the desktop icon. In my case what happens is that after clicking on the desktop icon the small black cloud icon appears (in hidden icons) and when I right click on it it shows I’m logged in and that it is initializing metadata. This then seemingly fails and cloud’s screen is gone. Whilst it was initializing access to the Open Preferences is blocked (which would seem reasonable during the “one off” initialization process). When the initialization fails Windows Application Event Error logs are created.
Guessing mostly from here on ...
5. Presumably the Initialization needs to communicate with the BT Cloud servers to set things up (I have seen the little cloud display a “contacting servers” message) and when as it checks the files it get the same error we do via the browser as in 3 above it basically goes ”.. what was that ! ...er.. dunno .. oops no explicit exception handler for this so ... crash” - which Windows then catches and reports. Given that this happens every time this is tried you can never make it work to the stage when the Preferences options are available and the next level of pain is exposed.
Any thoughts ?
....I’ll get my coat.
