* Using V5 on a Mac

[KFWilkinson]

I'm thinking of upgrading to Version 5.  I'm a Mac user and would like to know what others find to be the best way of running FH on a Mac.

I've previously run V4 by using Parallels and Windows Vista (I don't want to pay for a more recent version of Windows when I use it so rarely).  I find this makes my MacBook run very slowly so that it's difficult to do anything else, such as browse the internet, at the same time.

I tried the trial version of V5 using Crossover and found that I couldn't print diagrams as PDFs (a feature I use a lot).  It also makes FH look a bit ugly!

I had just about decided that it was time to switch to Mac family history software. However, having tried a few trial versions, I haven't found anything I like as much as FH and really want to stick with it if possible.

Any advice on running FH on a Mac much appreciated!

Thanks,
Kirsty

ID:6301

[philjo]

I switched to using a Mac in January. FH is the only programme I have that needs windows but as yet have not come up with a suitable solution.
I managed to get FH4 to run using crossover after a bit of fiddling (needed to copy the files/registry entries over from an installed version on the old XP PC) but it crashed occasionally.
It would help if as many people as possible can post requests to the Crossover site for FH5 to be fully supported as the more requests they get the more likely they will support it.

I have now installed virtualbox (free) & have used the windows 98 CD I had (this is the only full windows licence I have as XP is OEM for my old Dell PC) to run Win98. FH4 runs fine on this setup but FH5 won't run with win 98.

Unfortunately I can't find a UK source to purchase a windows XP licence and I have no particular wish to purchase win 7 licence (£110) just to get FH5 to run as I do not need it for any other software I use.

So I think I will probably stay using FH4 on windows 98 or maybe in time will reluctantly abandon using FH completely and switch to a dedicated Mac software. I haven't done much FH research recently so will stick with running it on win 98 for now. I would happily purchase a new dedicated Mac version of FH even if it cost 2 or 3 times the cost of the windows version

[RSellens]

Hi Kirsty,
I use v5 on my MacPro via parallels, and the performance really depends on you machines spec and the resources you assign to both the host & virtual machines. How much menory do you have available, and how much CPU/memory have you got assigned to the virtual machine, as this will effect the performance of the MAC side whilst parallels is running.

Richard

[KFWilkinson]

Thanks for the input.

I definitely need more RAM for my MacBook as using parallels is not the only thing that causes performance problems.

It sounds like it's worth upgrading to V5 and sticking with parallels, I may just need to upgrade the memory and play around with the resources assigned to parallels.

Kirsty [smile]

[stewartrb]

Try Bootcamp.

FH and all my Windows programs work flawlessly in Windows 7 on my iMac. (Granted I can't use the Mac side at the same time as the Windows side.)

[pjbwilson]

I just posted this on another thread, but this one seems more appropriate.

I am try to install the V5 upgrade on VMWare 3.14, but I am getting the error: Internal Error: Failed to expand shell folder constant 'userdocs'

Has anyone else experienced this?

It seems to be about the My Documents folder judging by what is coming up in Google.

Thanks,
Peter

[Jane]

See http://faq.shopfactory.com/kb/article-25.html

[pjbwilson]

Jane, thanks for replying, but I did some more googling and some more mucking about in settings and discovered the following.

In the Registry in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

There is a Personal item that gives the location of the 'My Documents' folder, in Win 7 'Documents'

The value was:

\\vmware-host\Shared Folders\Documents

so I changed it to

%USERPROFILE%\Shared Folders\Documents

and that worked. I hope this can help other people.

Cheers,
Peter

[maximus]

I had been using FH v3 since 2006 but in 2011 I changed to a Mac. Since there is no Mac version of FH I had to use Family Tree Maker for the Mac and although it is a well presented program it is not as easy to navigate the tree. It seems that FH is unique in its presentation of ancestors/descendants/all relatives and I miss it greatly.

I've tried to use FH under Crossover but this failed and recently I tried Parallels but this would not recognise my FH installation CD.

Today I have tried VMware 5 and it has worked. Having not used FH for 1.5 years I was immediately at home but the rendering is not as good as the native installation on a Windows machine. However, at least FH worked so I downloaded a trial of FH5 to see if it would be worth upgrading. No luck, I received errors and FH5 would not install. Maybe this was because I had installed Windows XP as the OS but either way it was a disappointment.

I'd gladly pay a premium to have a Mac version of FH. I've tried all the genealogy software that I can find that runs on a Mac and most are pretty poor in my opinion. The exceptions are Family Tree Maker and MacFamily Tree.

I'm going to re-evaluate MacFamily Tree as a possible alternative, maybe using it in combination with FTM. Only then will I be able to decide whether to buy VMware and use it with FH3. Since FH is the only Windows software that I miss then it doesn't look good for FH as I write this.

Happy New Year to everyone.

[Valkrider]

I have resurrected this old thread to see if anyone has tried getting FH to run under Wine on the MAC? Or is parallels still the best way to go?

I have just bought a MacBook Air and after looking at a couple of Mac family tree programmes I definitely need to get FH up and running on it.

[gerrynuk]

Jane, thanks for replying, but I did some more googling and some more mucking about in settings and discovered the following.

In the Registry in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

There is a Personal item that gives the location of the "My Documents" folder, in Win 7 "Documents"

The value was:

\\vmware-host\Shared Folders\Documents

so I changed it to

%USERPROFILE%\Shared Folders\Documents

and that worked. I hope this can help other people.

Cheers,
Peter

I am trying to install FH on 32 bit Win 8 running under Parallels. I get the same error message and tried the suggested fix but it is not working. Can anyone suggest how I can proceed, please? (By the way, the fix above omits the backslashes - \ - so I might have got the wrong text.)

[tatewise]

Gerry, I have retrieved the originally posted back-slashes from the archives. They got lost when the Forums moved last year.

[gerrynuk]

Gerry, I have retrieved the originally posted back-slashes from the archives. They got lost when the Forums moved last year.

Thanks Mike. I have actually found the solution so here goes in case anyone else needs it.

Open the Command Prompt window and type 'Regedit' (without the quotes) and press return. This should open the Registry Editor. You then need to navigate to this address:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

You then need to check that the key "Personal" has the value: %USERPROFILE%\Documents
as shown in the image below.