The WAGS Computer Interest Group (CIG) meeting on Saturday 12th August 2012 was another success story for a first time visitor, who is now a new WAGS member.Long story short - our visitor had recently purchased a new laptop with 64bit Win7 preloaded, also just upgraded the operating system (OS) on their desktop PC to Win7 64bit as well.

 

The user was wanting to load (install from a CD) their 2006 version of a well known genealogy program onto the laptop (also their desktop PC), and was getting an error message to the effect that the computers were not allowing the loading of the genealogy program.

 

The genealogy program was previously working perfectly on the desktop PC before the OS upgrade, and would not now even load onto either computer.Our CIG visitor was most frustrated, had asked other contacts about the problem that was happening, only to be told that: it was a common problem; that there was no easy solution; that 32 bit programs wouldn't work on 64 bit machines; and that they may have to use a virtual machine (VM) using Win XP in order to get it working.

 

After some discussion in the meeting, our knowledgeable group felt there was a solution within reach. As the visitor had brought their laptop and the CD with them, they were asked to stay behind and a couple of our members would have a look and see what they could do.32bit programs will (mostly) readily load onto a 64 bit Win7 computer, sometimes they need a bit of special treatment, but generally they will automatically load and work in 32bit mode.

 

One of our CIG members was using the same genealogy program (different version) and had recently loaded it onto a new Win7 64bit laptop, without any problems.It turns out that the problem in this case was not the loading of the program, although the error messages were in fact saying that the program would not load, it was the users over vigilant virus protection software saying that it didn't recognise the program as being legitimate, and that it looked like it could have been an attempt to load malware.

 

Switching off the virus protection for a short period, allowed the program to load.All is now well, the program works 99.9% but may need a bit of finessing to be 100% functional. The user is a very happy camper, and now a new WAGS member.

 

The CIG was able to provide a solution to a seemingly overwhelming, but as it turns out, a relatively simple but not readily evident, problem.The user is now working on copies of her genealogy database/s which were made at the time of the PC upgrade as a backup, and which were loaded onto the laptop from a portable drive that the user had also brought with them.

 

If in doubt, bring your problems to the WAGS Computer Interest Group - our aim is to help each other, and we do...Win-Win