Recently, many GoldMine users have been encountering a problem that stops their GoldMine in its tracks. When they double-click the GoldMine shortcut, they’re presented with an inscrutable error: “A referral was returned from the server.” After the error, GoldMine does not start.

What’s going on is that every GoldMine version has a digital signature and the one used with GoldMine 8.0.x expired in early December, 2009. That means that the windows User Account Control (UAC) feature will not allow it to run.

UAC is a feature that is built into Windows Vista, Server 2008 and Windows 7. You know it as that annoying feature that produces a constant stream of messages along the lines of, “Hey, it looks like you are trying to double-click an icon. Did you know that icons could run terrible viruses? Please click OK to confirm you want to run the thing you double-clicked!” A lot of people have simply turned UAC off (including me!) but those who have not are now finding themselves unable to run GoldMine.

There are two possible solutions

1. Turn off UAC like the rest of us. Of course, if you haven’t done that by now, you probably have a very good reason (like you use Quickbooks, which requires it) or you enjoy the implied additional security features.
2. Patch to version 8.5.x of GoldMine (free to customers current on their Frontrange Maintenance) and enjoy the many fixes and new features introduced therein (including a new digital certificate.)