* FH V5 not responding when loading

[mfro]

When I attempted to open Family Historian (V 5.0.9) I got as far as the grey background, i,e, with no Tips Window and eventually the "Family Historian is not responding message" appeared in the Title Bar. I waited, but still the little blue spinning circle turned, and eventually I shut the computer down. In the years I have been using Family Historian, this has never happened.

I then switched on and tried to load Family Historian a second time. When the Tips Window still failed to appear when I would expect, I lost heart, and did some searches to see what might be behind it. (I am on a week's research trip, and my Family Historian CDs V3, V4 and V5) are 400 miles away so I felt some low-level panic.)

After a couple of minutes I checked to see what Family Historian was doing, and found that the Tips Window had appeared, and I was able to follow through to view the tree I needed to update. It was the tip about testing your backups; that may have been just a coincidence.

But the resulting panic has left me somewhat uneasy. Is this a hint of trouble ahead?

Can anyone suggest what I should do if this happens again, and I am unable to open the program at all, please?

I do back up regularly, in addition to the backup on Exiting, and particularly so since having had a new hard drive (and its replacement) fail in rapid succession. The seven weeks of stress behind that story

OS is Windows 8, if that is relevant here.

Thank you!

[tatewise]

It would help to know the background to your FH V5 installation.
Has FH V5.0.9 been running fine until now, and just started misbehaving, or have you only just updated and this is its first use?

If you have a small Project such as Family Historian Sample Project then try to open that by double-clicking its GEDCOM File.

Since you have been using FH for years, I wonder if you have a large Project with many Multimedia Images?
If the small Project is OK, then try Tools > Preferences > General tab Advanced button, and untick Auto-load Thumbnail Images When Opening Project.

If that does not help, then are there any other recent PC changes that may affect FH, such as new Anti-Virus Package, etc?

[mfro]

Thank you for your swift response and the suggestions of what might be behind this 'issue'.

At the moment, apart from two occasions when Family Historian did not respond at all, and froze, I am able to access my projects. Family Historian is still slow to load, so what I do is open it, and then go away and work on something else for a minute or so, to allow the Tips Window to appear.

So long as I can avoid a crisis this week, I am planning to sort this out when I return home and have access to the v5 book and my CDs.

But to answer your questions.

Background to installation: For the installation of v 5, I followed my well-thumbed printout of the advice on the User Group. Well-thumbed because I upgraded to a new computer a year ago. In April this year, its hard drive failed (it was faulty) and after seven weeks, I got the laptop back with a replacement drive, and reloaded Family Historian, only for the replacement to fail at which point the store terminated my distress by replacing it with another computer.

It has a processor that is slightly 'slower' than the one I had, but not so slow as to be a factor with the problem I have with slow loading. I had sent an email (off list) for advice ahead of this re-installation as I understood that FH would identify it as my breaching the terms. Following the general advice on re-installing on a new pc, and bearing in mind the reply to my email, I successfully re-installed Family Historian about four weeks ago, and when the installation appeared to have been 'seamless', I updated to v5.0.9

Yes, everything ran as normal, and the misbehaviour dates from this week.

Multi-media: I have a number of Projects but on only one ot them do I have Multi-Media, but a modest amount and it is not a project that I have loaded since the 'trouble' with the hard drive started.

I have been happily and successfully using AVG Free Version for many years, without any problems, but, still stressed by repeated hard drive problems, I weakened with the new laptop's offer of a radically reduced rate for Norton, which was installed within a day.

Java is installed on my new computer, but that's the only thing I can think of that I've had trouble with and I didn't realise it until yesterday. There aren't any earlier Java versions that I ought to have uninstalled using their tool. I wanted to use it yesterday, and thought perhaps I hadn't installed it on the latest hard drive, but it is there. I used an alternative image viewer instead. The Java logo spins, but the image doesn't load. And Java tells me I have it installed. That's also something I'm hoping to sort out when I return home.

So perhaps Norton could be behind both these problems i.e. blocking the image or interfering with Family Historian? In which case, I'll apologise for being a pest, and I'll have to join a Norton list, or uninstall it.

Thank you again, and I may post again if FH freezes on me.
Regards

[jimlad68]

I would certainly try switching off Norton temporarily or if you are worried about virus go back to your old AVG which did not give you any problems previously (I found some years ago now that AVG was slow, but most of them are now with so much more work to do)!

Because of the increased threats, I think most of the virus programs are much "keener" and also have many more false positives, but they often advise you so you can make a choice. I have heard of Norton more than others upsetting programs.

I was using Avast, but felt it was good but slow, so I moved to Avira which seems faster AFTER an initial 10 mins slowing down the laptop. Never had any problems with either with FH or anything else, except many of the free versions (not Avira) take your laptop into their own hands, i.e. they quarantine things behind your back or give you no option but to quarantine items.

This is where I get a lot of my info from:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-fr ... ftware.htm

unfortunately, you often need to try different software to find what suits you best, mmm, genealogy being no exception!

[tatewise]

I think Norton is the likely cause of the problem.
There are several other threads where Norton disrupts FH:
V5 - 5.09 Update removed from computer (11307)
High Usage with FH 5 (5558)
and others.
I suggest adjusting Norton to exclude FH:

Go to Settings > Miscellaneous Settings > Performance Monitoring. You have many options, including turning off Performance Monitoring, turning off Performance Alerts, or raising the alert threshold. The best method, however, is to use the Program Exclusions configuration option to exclude specific programs from Performance Monitoring.

Alternatively, used anotheranti-virus product such as the free Avast! or Microsoft Security Essentials both of which I recommend to our computer club members.

[mfro]

Thank you very much JimLad and tatewise. (This time I remembered to tick the box for a reply.)

I decided to go for the option of excluding the program.

I easily reached the point to choose the progam to exclude from Norton, and in the Programs folder, I can see the family Historian folder, but inside that, I don't know which folder to open to exclude the executable file.

(I did use a search engine to try to find a video demo, but they don't seem to have one.)

Rather than mess with my thus far trusty Family Historian, or damage some bit of registry, I'm going to add that job to the list for the end of the week, when I hope to be under less pressure.

Many thanks for taking the time to provide this support.

Regards and good wishes

[tatewise]

FH is the C:\Program Files (x86)\Family Historian\Program\fh.exe Application file with the usual fh logo icon.

[Jane]

BTW it's worth excluding the whole FH folder, as it can prevent scanning of the .dll's which are in the same folder.