* Problem Upgrading to AS7

[NickWalker]

This is not an AS problem at all, hundreds of people have downloaded it this week and I've not had other reports of this problem. Your PC is not allowing AS to create a folder in your documents. There is nothing that AS can do about that, if it's being blocked, it's being blocked!

My suspicion, as I mentioned before, is that you have some anti-virus or security software that has decided it doesn't trust AS and therefore is blocking it from accessing your document folder. Do you have anti-virus or other security software and if so can you see if there is a section where you can 'whitelist' applications?

[stuartd]

This is not an AS problem at all, hundreds of people have downloaded it this week and I've not had other reports of this problem. Your PC is not allowing AS to create a folder in your documents. There is nothing that AS can do about that, if it's being blocked, it's being blocked!

My suspicion, as I mentioned before, is that you have some anti-virus or security software that has decided it doesn't trust AS and therefore is blocking it from accessing your document folder. Do you have anti-virus or other security software and if so can you see if there is a section where you can 'whitelist' applications?

As I said a couple of posts back I use Windows Defender, and no third-party anti-virus packages.
Is there some reason why Defender would single out AS for blocking? It hasn't done so for anything else.
It didn't stop me downloading AS nor prevent me from installing it (although the first time I did so, not as Administrator, I did have to overrride the blue box warning by selecting Run Anyway).

[RS3100]

I don't think for one minute that I can solve this, but I have the observation that C:\Users\Microsoft Windows\... is a very unusual folder path.

C:\Users\<username> is the normal location of the personal folders assigned to each user created on the computer, which includes each user's personal "Documents", "Pictures", "Videos", "Music", "Downloads", "Desktop" folders etc. For example:

C:\Users\Fred
C:\Users\Jane
C:\Users\Admin
C:\Users\Public (which is a public shared folder).
etc.

Apart from the "C:\Users\Public" folder, user folders are normally only accessible by the user to whom they relate.

Stuart, do you log in to your computer as "Microsoft Windows", i.e. is that your username?

If so, it is unusual, and although Microsoft allows spaces in usernames, it is generally not advised due to compatibility issues. If "Microsoft Windows" is not your user name, then typically access to folders under the path "C:\Users\Microsoft Windows\..." would be denied to any other user, including any with administrative privileges.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Defender and other virus checkers often take some time to catch up with the release of new software and default to marking anything they haven't seen before as harmful. Even when they do catch up, if you haven't updated your virus signatures, your local copy of Defender will still go oh-oh.

(although the first time I did so, not as Administrator, I did have to overrride the blue box warning by selecting Run Anyway

i.e. either Microsoft hadn't updated the virus signatures (and Defender and SmartScreen are managed and updated separately) or you weren't totally up-to-date at that point in time.

[tatewise]

@RS3100 ~ stuartd answered that earlier by saying he does not sign in to his PC (i.e. he has no password)
He does not seem to know his username and whether it is Microsoft Windows or not.
Anyway, he clearly has write permission to C:\Users\Microsoft Windows\Documents\ because he can delete the Ancestral Sources folder that was originally created there. It is a mystery.
Also, that /Documents/ path is the root to his working folders.

I'm not even convinced that editing the Windows Registry for the Ancestral Sources keys for its folder paths would help.

[NickWalker]

I use Windows Defender myself and I don't think it can be blocking AS access to documents, because that's not the way it does things.

It's certainly a mystery. I do agree that the folder path is very unusual and not following the usual way of doing things at all.

If you would prefer to answer this via email (nick at ancestralsources dot com) then please do, but it would be interesting to see some settings on your PC...
If you click on the start menu in Windows 10 and type:

cmd

then run the command prompt option that appears and then type:

set (press Enter to run the command)

and copy and paste what it says for the APPDATA, HOMEPATH and USERPROFILE settings. For comparison mine are:

APPDATA=C:\Users\NickW\AppData\Roaming
HOMEPATH=\Users\NickW
USERPROFILE=C:\Users\NickW

Cheers

Nick

[stuartd]

Just in case it might be of relevance to anyone else...
I assume that my PC was set up without any defined Users because there is only one user, and no username nor password for that one user (which is me obviously).
When I switch on the start up process takes me straight to my normal desktop. If I wake it up from Sleep the screen displays my chosen photo plus the clock/calendar and the words Microsoft Windows, underneath which is a box with Sign In. I click on that and my normal desktop is resumed. At no point in any circumstances have I needed to enter a username or password to access the PC.
I accept Nick's asertion that this is not an AS problem; but would re-iterate that it is a problem that has only occurred with the latest version of AS - previous versions ran perfectly satisfactorily on this PC, as have all versions of all my other software.
As far as I'm concerned the matter is closed.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Microsoft Windows, underneath which is a box with Sign In

OK, your username IS 'Microsoft Windows'.

[tatewise]

This a punt, but is the space in Microsoft Windows a problem for AS?

[NickWalker]

I don't see why it would be anything to do with a space, there's already a space in the 'Ancestral Sources' folder name. Anyway Stuart doesn't seem to want us to ask him about it anymore so best to leave it.

Stuart: if at some point in the future you feel like resolving this then please do drop me an email (nick at ancestralsources dot com) and I'll be happy to help you get this working.

[stuartd]

........
Stuart: if at some point in the future you feel like resolving this then please do drop me an email (nick at ancestralsources dot com) and I'll be happy to help you get this working.

I have resolved this problem, but probably not in a way that you would wish for.
Having discovered that I still had the installer for the previous version of Ancestral Sources I have run this (not even as Adminstrator!) and successfully re-installed AS v.5.2. This opens as it always did, with no error messages, and a couple of test runs with census data appears to have worked fine with FH7.
Clearly nothing has changed in my PC and OS set-up overnight, so there is obviously some change between AS5.2 and AS7 that my set-up doesn't like.
As I only ever used AS for census data, (and have found it extremely useful for that), this arrangement does what I need so I will stick with that.
Many thanks for your efforts (and Mike's) to unravel what remains a mystery.

[LornaCraig]

Stuart, no doubt Nick will reply as soon as he sees this and I will leave it to him to explain what problems you may encounter, but before you do too much with a combination of AS 5 and FH7 you must be warned that they are not compatible.

Wait until Nick gets back to you on this before you go any further.

[NickWalker]

Stuart as Lorna says, you shouldn't use any version of AS with Family Historian 7 except for AS v7. The results will be very unpredictable because earlier versions of AS will be saving the file in a different format (Gedcom 5.5 rather than 5.5.1). It will certainly not save links to images correctly and you may find other data goes missing.

If you would like to email me (nick at ancestralsources dot com) then I'm happy to explore the issue with AS v7 with you. It would be very helpful from my viewpoint to work out what the problem is in case anyone else ever has the problems. I have spent hundreds (probably thousands) of hours developing Ancestral Sources and it is free for everyone to use if they wish (although the donations are very welcome and encourage me!) but I don't like to have an unresolved issue like this and an unhappy customer (so to speak).

[NickWalker]

I'm very pleased to say that Stuart got in touch with me via email and we managed to fix the issue. For those who are interested, it was actually Windows Defender that was blocking Ancestral Sources from accessing the documents folder. Stuart had Controlled Folder Access turned on in the Ransomware Protection Windows Security application. I have to confess that I'd not been aware of this setting before as it isn't switched on by default on any of my PCs and must be a relatively new feature. With this switched on Ancestral Sources (and FH but to a less serious extent) is blocked from accessing the documents folder until unblocked. For me it does show a notification that this happening, but it's quite brief and at the bottom-right of the screen. Stuart has now 'allowed' Ancestral Sources and it now runs without any errors.

I've created a knowledge base article explaining how to deal with this: Solving Windows Defender and Edge Browser blocking Ancestral Sources: see the third section on the page entitled: Ancestral Sources blocked from accessing documents.

[tatewise]

Yes, I switched that Controlled Folder Access on for Ransomware Protection but it is very intrusive and when violated is not very informative. Cannot remember whether I decide to switch it off.