We received a call from a customer last week (GoldMine Premium Edition 8.0.2 in a Vista OS), who was getting the following error when attempting to login: “A referral was returned from the server.” GoldMine would not start.

After researching the issue we found that the digital signature used with GoldMine 8.0.x expired in early December. In a Vista environment, this means that if the Vista User Account Control (UAC) feature is turned "On," GoldMine will not be allowed to run.

UAC is a feature that is built into Vista, Server 2008 and Windows 7. It appears as a warning messages asking for confirmation when you double-click on an icon. Many users have, long ago, turned UAC "Off". Some Programs however (eg. QuickBooks), require the UAC.

Your two options are to run Vista with UAC turned "Off"

or

upgrade to version 8.5.x of GoldMine. (If your Maintenance contract is current, there is no charge for the software and you can take advantage of some new features and fixes, along with an active digital certificate.)

Contact Core today to check your eligibility.

The file: Microsoft.Crm.Tools.EmailAgent.SystemState.xml  is corrupt.  The file size is probably 0 K.  To fix the problem (as always - back up before performing these steps):

1. On the server running the email router, navigate to the directory where the email router service is installed
2. Delete the file - it will be recreated when the service starts.  
3. Start the service

Here are some helpful queries you can run through your SQL interface.  Records that are not inter-connected in the Goldmine database (known as Orphan Records) can cause some major issues, especially if you are planning on upgrading.

--this one gives you a record count:

select count(accountno) from contact1

-- this one should come back as zero:

select count(accountno) from contact1
where accountno not in (select accountno from contact2)

--this one should have less than 5:

select count(accountno) from contact2
where accountno not in (select accountno from contact1)

--lastly, check your history:

select count(accountno) from conthist
where accountno not in (select accountno from contact1)

If any of the last 3 queries results in any value above 20, you should contact your Goldmine Consultant  and discuss methods of cleaning your database.