Family Historian User Group

I've started to get a problem with v7 in that when I start FH it opens with "Untitled Standalone GEDCOM file (limited functionality)" which is empty and then eventually opens my default project. I haven't made any changes to the setup as far as I know but its started to do this in the last few days.

Any ideas.

How do open it? Do you select the project in the Project window of FH, or just click on the gedcom file somewhere?
If you have only one main project I recommend you set it as the default project (select it in the Project window, then use More Tasks and Set as Default Project). Then whenever you run FH it should open automatically on that project.

Rick says FH does eventually open his default Project, so presumably has already done as you suggest Lorna.

Can you use Windows File Explorer and carefully navigate to the ...fh_data folder where the .ged file exists and post a screenshot of the files and folders there.
If you don't know what folder I'm talking about then tell us your Project name and I'll give more precise details.
Do you know how to post screenshots?

Lorna,
I have my main project already set as the default project so that when you open the FH program it should start with that. Which up until a few days ago it did, but now its started opening with a "Untitled Standalone GEDCOM file (limited functionality)" then opens the Default Project after maybe 20 seconds.

Mike
herewith a screenshot of the folder you requested.

That's what happened to me the very first time I ran the release version of Family Historian 7 back in early December. I assumed the delay was because it was checking my licence and perhaps the servers were busy etc. So I wonder if it's doing some kind of licence check?

That appears to be the default Banner Heading whilst default project loads.
All I can say is that FH7 seems to take longer to load my project than it did in FH6, so banner is perhaps more obvious, due to delay in starting .
I just restarted my project, and I get exactly the same banner whilst project loads.

Gowermick: the screenshot Rick posted is showing the .fh_data file structure, as requested by Mike. It is not showing the banner at the top of FH.

I don't know what those four .tmp files are doing there, but they are quite old so probably not connected with the recent problem.

Lorna
I don't know what they are either but I've deleted them just in case, doesn't make any difference.

It's not just a banner it looks like a whole empty file called "Untitled"

LornaCraig wrote: ↑

10 Jan 2021 15:01

Gowermick: the screenshot Rick posted is showing the .fh_data file structure, as requested by Mike. It is not showing the banner at the top of FH.

I think Gowermick just means that 'Untitled Standalone GEDCOM file (limited functionality)' is the default file name while it's loading up - that's what I saw for 20+ seconds the very first time I ran FH7.

Thanks for all your responses and it appears that this is "normal" on startup. As it doesn't seem to affect the operation of FH once everything is loaded I'll leave it as is.

Those ~fh....tmp files that you have now deleted are caused when FH cannot save the GEDCOM file.
That can happen when the file is locked by some other application so FH cannot rename it.

Your current symptoms are similarly caused by access delays opening the GEDCOM file.

I got your symptoms (once) by opening the GEDCOM file in another application (MS Word) and then opened FH V7.
So it seems as if there is something delaying access to the GEDCOM file.
Perhaps an Anti-virus scan, Auto Backup, cloud store?

Is H:\ a local hard disk partition, or a network location? If it’s network with just a Wi-Fi connection, poor connectivity could be the cause. FH7 is slower to load than FH6 and the splash screen stays visible throughout the loading process, so any slowdown will probably be more noticeable than it was before.

Mark

The H: \ is a removable storage device where my genealogy data is stored.

So it may simply be access delay via the USB port?
Does the drive have a habit of spinning down when not in use?

Mike

Thanks for the info re the tmp files.

I don't use auto backup as that's screwed me up before with AS. I backup manually when I make changes and also backup to dropbox when I close FH. The only program I use to open the gedcom outside FH is Notepad ++ and I've never had this problem before FH7.

A completely different topic but I just wanted to let you know that I've solved the problem with Windows 7 and the "Check Installed Plugins against the store" giving a COM error, or anything else that checks the store. You need to now have TLS enabled, in Windows 10 its enabled by default but in windows 7 its not. I had to add two new keys to the registry and all now works fine.

The H drive is a solid state drive.

Lorna,
I was referring to the original post, where OP was complaing about his header. I was just saying I get exactly the same
NB I had to be pretty quick with screen capture This is before Default Project loads. i.e. it seems normal behaviour, as all my projects are in my default folder

Mike L

Glad you managed to capture the image I just couldn't get it quick enough.

It did take me two attempts