Wednesday, June 8, 2011

GenDetective 10-Day Trial

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After writing GenDetective is Available for Download, I went to the website and downloaded the program.  The process was:

*  click on the "Download" button
*  Fill in a first name, last name, and email address.
*  An email was sent with a link to a web page that downloaded an executable file.
*  The program downloaded and was installed.
*  During the installation, the program prompts for a download of Microsoft Office 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies software.
*  The program should open when the installation is complete.

Unfortunately, during the installation I did not click on the Microsoft software download, I clicked on Cancel and it wasn't downloaded.  Therefore, I got a message when GenDetective opened, saying that it cannot run without the Microsoft software, and to click on the link to download it.

I downloaded the Microsoft software, and clicked on the GenDetective icon on my desktop and got the same message.

I rebooted the computer, and tried the GenDetective icon again, and got the same message.

At this point, I emailed GenDetective with a summary of my progress.  I quickly received an Auto-Reply that "We will be out of the office from Wednesday June 8 thru Monday June 13th attending the Southern California Jamboree! We will respond to your email as soon as possible."

Rats!  Foiled again.  The GenDetective evaluation will have to wait awhile.

For the record, the retail price for GenDetective is $32.95 for a download, and $37.95 for a CDROM via postal mail. 

3 comments:

Jackie said...

You might try uninstalling and reinstalling GenDetective.

Anonymous said...

Your experience mirrored mine, but I did not even get an automated reply:

This software has potential but it does not seem to be professional--I downloaded the 169 mb software, tried to install and it required a special "Office 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies" which I tried to do but it still would not work--the program starts and never continues.

Also readme for this Office 2007 program says that uninstall can do some damage--so I am stuck with a program (10 day trial) that won't work and now I have jeopardized my computer.

Also, I emailed Rumblesoft and still no reply--I don't think they have a support system in place yet.

To download the 169 mb takes some patience--it looks complicated from the PDF readme file -- not too user friendly, no support, difficult to install and simply does not run for me (XP SP 3).

I will try the uninstall and reinstall one more time--did it twice already, but with no reply--hate to think that one person is trying to do everything--that spells trouble.

Anonymous said...

I bought a copy of GenDetective yesterday at the Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank. When I arrived home last night, I had problems installing it as the disk I recieved contained a license key that had handwritten corrections over it. After the program finally accepted an activation key (the written corrections worked), I then received two more errors:

The first one is about "“A potential security concern . . .” - according to the developer's web site, one can just click through and accept "yes" (to allow the program to run on your computer).

The second problem I cannot get through. That error states,

“Please allow Office to finish reconfiguring itself and then launch the GenDetective Reporter again”

The error is meaningless as Office is fully installed on my system and works just fine. Rebooting the computer and trying again does nothing to help. At present, I can't get GenDetective to run. I wish that their web site had a forum or better help files.

I also clicked on a link (either from the error message or their site, I can't remember which at the moment) and am taken to an Office 2007 page on Microsoft's site. I'm not running Office 2007, I run Office 2010.

Finally, I've sent a couple of e-mails and haven't received the automated response you reported.

Thanks.