Support in general

If an Atlas software reports at startup that a secure connection cannot be established with the Atlas server:

1. Check that the time of your computer is correct. Atlas software attempts to establish a secure connection to the Atlas server. If the time differs too much from the real world time, Windows will refuse, and rightly so.

2. Test the secure address in your browser with https://www.atlas-informatik.ch. The 's' in the address is very important. Our web portal should now be displayed without any problems or queries. If any error messages or question boxes appear here, the computer generally has a problem with secure connections. Try to fix this first.

If you want to run Atlas software, where the question arises whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit system:

Change to the control panel "System->System". Under "System Type" you will see which system it is.

When trying to run a setup on Windows 10, on certain Windows versions the .NET Framework 4.8 cannot be installed. At the end of the progress bar, a message box appears with the error "An error occurred while installing system components for ... Setup cannot continue until all system components have been successfully installed.". This is just a bug in Microsoft's .NET 4.8 automated installer which only occurs on Windows 10. The framework was installed just fine, but it should actually tell you "You need to restart your PC and then restart the setup.".

Right click on the Shutdown icon and activate "Update and restart". This is actually the hint that an update is waiting.

After this is done and the computer is ready again, you should first run "Check for Updates" once more and see if there are any other Windows update packages pending. If this is not longer the case, you can run the setup of the Atlas application again.

If at the end of the installation the application simply doesn't want to appear, it gets probably blocked by 'Windows Defender Antivirus'. Defender mistakenly thinks that the application is harmful, even that all our apps are signed with a certificate. Maybe it's because Atlas apps are obfuscated by design. In any case this is a so called False-Positive. What makes it worse is that there is sometimes not even a message that would inform the user of this blockade. If you want to be absolutely safe you can upload the app to VirusTotal.com. There it will be checked by approx. 70 antivirus programs. These don't make this mistake and show the app as virus-free. So we need to add the Atlas app to the "Approved" list of Defender:

1. Be sure that the Setup program has completely finished (Button "Close" at the end)
2. Assert that you are logged in as a user with administrator privileges
3. Launch "Virus & threat protection" from the Windows Start menu
4. Click the blue link Protection history resp. Threat history
5. In some Windows variants there is a link See full History in the chapter "Allowed threats".
6. In the list we see either Threat blocked or that the app is falsely identified as 'PWS:MSIL/CryptInjector!MTB' or similar
7. Click on the right on "Severe" and confirm a possibly appearing question box
8. Click the "Actions" button and select "Allow" resp. "Restore". If a question box is displayed click "Yes".
9. If there is a button "Start Actions" below, click this button
10. Start the application (not the setup). It should now start normally. Please allow it some time since it is its first start ever. Sadly Defender often doesn't restore the app's icon, but at the next computer restart it will do.

Another option you have is to install a third party antivirus program. There are some that have better detection rates and less false positives than Windows Defender and are also free of costs. We used Avast and Avira for years and are very happy with them.

• To exit Explorer in the smoothest way, you can Ctrl-Shift-Right-click on the taskbar and click "Exit Explorer".
  

• To quit Explorer, you can press the keys Ctrl-Shift-Esc, switch to the details pane and right-click on any "explorer.exe" and click "Quit Task".
  

• If the screen is completely gray or black and the Windows desktop is not visible: press the keys Ctrl-Shift-Esc. This will display the Task Manager application. Then start the menu function "File->Run Task" and type "logoff". You should now end up on the screen where users can log in and everything should be back to normal. If this still doesn't give you the desired result, you can also type "shutdown /r /t 0". This will cause a reboot.
  

• Use Microsoft's uninstall repair utility to uninstall. This still seems to work. Note that the program displays a warning box at the end hidden behind the current dialog, which is easy to miss (the first time I waited 5 minutes until it noticed it). Also to mention that it will reboot the computer.
  

• Hold down the keys [Ctrl] and [Shift] while uninstalling the app. This will cause the computer to reboot at the end of a successful uninstall. Without these keys only a restart of the Windows desktop is done. Note that this is only possible with newer versions of our apps.