Filemaker Pro has stopped working with Vista

[LynMonet]

I sell a shrink wrapped solution currently on FM Pro 6. It can be installed using a FM Pro 6 in a runtime solution or by installing FM Pro 6 first for our multi-user clients.

A client has Vista Home edition and after a normal install of the software he gets an error when trying to launch it.

"FileMaker Pro Runtime has stopped working.

A problem has caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available."

Updating Vista, removing and re-installing have not changed the problem.

I have other clients with Vista who did not get any errors with this install. Any ideas to try?

[bcooney]

Where do you install the runtime? I believe that Program Files is not the best idea.

btw, only FM8.5+ is officially supported on Vista.

[LynMonet]

Thanks for your response. Both the FM6 runtime and the regular install of FM Pro 6 are installing by default in the Program Files folder. There are a lot of plug ins so while possible to move the install location, we'll have to provide detailed instructions to users how to locate and move the plug ins. I'm not a developer so it's a challenge for me already!

Each time FM Pro tries to launch, no matter whether FM Runtime or regular, there's an error.

We haven't had any issues with Vista before this but I previously wasn't aware of whether the users were using Vista Pro or Home. Our application is commercial use.

Our developer said we couldn't migrate this software to FM 7. Our application is very large but they said the entire program could be rewritten faster than it could be migrated. Also, FM 7 didn't offer benefits over the existing platform.I didn't understand all the technicalities as our company performed a large number of migrations for our development clients but I have to trust the developer. We are currently looking at FM 11 to rewrite it.

[bcooney]

Your developer is correct, the best approach, imho, to move to FM7+ is to do a rewrite. I don't agree with FM7 not offering any benefits: in fact, support of existing OS is a big benefit!

I believe that Vista's protection system is causing your problems, and that you should not install in the Program Files folder. Some devs just use C:.

[LynMonet]

We've had the existing software since 1998, I think. It's been migrated a few times on the FM Pro platforms with minimal development cost. However to completely rewrite the application will take 6-9 months of development time with no income being produced by that developer. FM 7 through 9, while many improvements from a developers standpoint, didn't allow for enough enhancements to the software itself from the user standpoint to cover the cost of development.

With a future possible version of 11 we've decided it's time but I still need to support our existing clients with this software plus those that will purchase it until the next release. Any help with this is really appreciated.

Edited February 15, 2010 by Guest
Reworded to conform to NDA rules

[bcooney]

FM11 doesn't exist, so I can't comment on that.

Developer improvements, imho, directly translate into improved user experience. I know the FM6-FM7 jump might have been hard to justify, but that was quite a while ago. It's now a matter of urgency, if you want to continue to market to today's OS.

Good luck with existing customers. I can't imagine migrating their data will be easy.

[LynMonet]

Thanks. There won't be any migration. Same concept as going from DOS to Windows.

OK - I'll keep looking for an answer to this one issue.

Edited February 12, 2010 by Guest
Removed discussion subject to non-disclosure agreement.