Family Historian User Group

I have a validated file which seems to have recently started failing in this way from time to time.  I have tried to recording the exact sequence of commands immediately prior to crash.

The only consistent pattern I may have found (I am not actually sure if this happened absolutely every crash, but it certainly has done so frequently) is that, with both the property diaglog and records windows open,  I may have navigated to a father using the property dialog then clicked the 'go to record', then clicked the 'descendant chart' button, immediately resulting in the crash and the report by Microsoft that Family Historian had encountered a problem with the offer  to send a report to microsoft, which I declined.

When I restart FH and try and repeat the last few actions it does not crash. But some time later I get another crash, in similar circumstances.

I am using Windows XP SP2 and the FH version is 2.3.2.1 according to the temp file that the Microsoft application crash routine  produces. This file also mentions Mod Name pscript5.dll Mod ver 0.3.1296.1 Offset 00027508.

I have tried resarting the computer and closing other programmes but this does not stop it happening.

The really strange thing is that it seems to be happening more frequently. It seems to happen in quite different areas of my 750 KB Gedcom. The only recent change to my system was the monthly Software Distribution Service 2.0 from Microsoft which I installed this morning, but the fault has been occurring for about a week before this.

Any suggestions of how to diagnose the problem further would be appreciated.

ID:887

Can you confirm what version you have installed, via the help on FH, if you do not have 2.3.5 I would install that first.

Michael

the crash report says that the crash is occurring in pscript5.dll.  That isn't actually part of the Family Historian code, so it must be a code module that gets called directly or indirectly by FH.  It sounds like a printer driver (possibly something to do with postscript?).  That's not impossible (although its hard to see why it would have crashed).  Try selecting a different printer as your default one (before opening the diagram) and see whether that helps.  Also, have you run Validate again to double-check that corruption hasn't crept in somehow?  And as Jane says, try upgrading to 2.3.5 too.

Thanks for the super quick response. What a service!

I cant think why I am not up to date with my version. Must not be paying attention to the FHUG. Anyway, I have installed the 2.3.5 download now.

Following Simon's suggestions I have had a look at the printer setup and now I believe I have found a reproducible failure associated with the Adobe Acrobat Distiller printer programme.

The follwowing sequence is reproduicble with FH 2.3.5 on two different gedcom (so gedcom independent):

I have acrobat distiller set as default printer
Open FH 2.3.5
click printer setup; Click ok
FH (or distiller perhaps) crashes with the details Appname: fh.exe App Ver:2.3.4.1 (weird since about FH gives 2.3.5)
Mod name pscript5.dll
Modver 0.3.1296.1
Offset 00027508

The pscript part is the identical module to that which I had before.

I do think that Simon has put his finger straight on the problem since I did switch over to distiller as my default printer a few weeks ago.

I am using an old version of acrobat: 5.0.5 26/10/2001. Perhaps I have to buy the new version which is quite expensive unfortunately although it does have new features that will be useful to me since I do quite a lot with pdf files.

Anyway for now I will switch over to an HP as the default printer and see if this clears the problem.

Thanks again for the help.

I would buy a copy of eDocprinter (except I already have[grin]) at about $25 (dollars not £) it does much more that distiller and can do 90% of what acrobat does.

Or
you could use PDF995 at $9.95 which does basic PDF creation.

You can use the latter one for free as well.

The eDocPrinter can automatically create bookmarks etc which distiller does not, it also intergrates to Word and excel in a similar way to acrobat.

I have downloaded eDocPrinter, which I agree has a fancy set of options for printing, and so could be used instead of Distiller.

But what I need sometimes to do is
1) edit and extract text in .pdf docs
2) Add page numbers
3) Put a folder of sequentially numbered jpeg pictures from my digital camera ( from when I photograph a family history book) into a pdf file for sharing and printing. At the moment I use acrobat 5 plus two cheap utilities for this.

I think It all may be better integrated in Acrobat 7.0, unless of course anyone knows better...

The eDoc people are very helpful about adding functions the printing all the pictures is easy any way you just right click on the lot in explorer and select print and tell eDoc to merge them.

As long as the PDF author has not locked the pages you can extract the text with the text tool in acrobat reader.