Family Historian

Installation Questions
ID #1019

A small number of users have reported this problem. In all cases that we have investigated, the problem arose because some version of Family Historian (usually a trial version) had been installed onto a PC, and then another different version (a full version - not an upgrade) had been installed on top of it, without the first version having been first uninstalled. The problem can arise even if version 3 worked fine and the trial version you installed was installed before version 3. Even in this case, the legacy of confused settings from the two overlapping installations can prevent version 4 running.

Please click on the link below to download a patch to fix the problem:

Download fhpatch0905.exe (41 KB)

We recommend saving the file to 'Desktop'. After saving, the patch file will appear on the screen desktop and you can double-click it to run it.

If your web-browser offers you the chance to Run or Open the file, you can run the patch this way if you prefer.

When the patch file has been run, if it has corrected the error, you should be able to run Family Historian immediately.

What to do if the patch does not fix the problem...

If the patch has not corrected the error, you will need to do a complete uninstall and reinstall of Family Historian 3, and then re-apply the upgrade to version 4.

Even if you cannot remember ever having installed a trial version, we recommend that you do a complete uninstall, followed by a complete reinstall, in this case. However, before uninstalling, make sure you have all the installation programs you will need, and all registration keys (both version 3 and version 4 have keys - version 2 did not). To uninstall, run "Add or Remove Programs" on the Control Panel, select Family Historian and click 'Remove' (the procedure may vary slightly on different versions of Windows).

When reinstalling, you will need to follow the same procedure that you used to install the software in the first place. If, for example, you started with version 2, and then applied an upgrade to version 3, you will need to reinstall version 2 and then re-apply the upgrade to version 3. There is no need to re-apply 'minor' version upgrades (e.g. you do not need to upgrade version 2 to 2.1, or version 3.0 to 3.1 etc). Make sure you run version 3 at least once before applying the upgrade to version 4.