Access Violation errors

Did you try the left chevron in Descendant View on a person with no children or spouse and with that person in the primary position? That is where it is most repeatable for me.

Yes, I’ve experienced this bug many times in versions 8-9-10. I keep dreaming/hallucinating that the bug will be fixed in the next release. I’ve lived with this defect.

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I can make this happen on 1 click in some databases–usually occurs between 3-8 clicks BUT sometimes does not happen as of today-- if it happens, it always happens for me when you go up one generation from child to parent-- the work around is to FIRST go down one level from person to their child --then I never had it happen BUT do usually get a Runtime Error 217 when I close the program..

I get the Runtime Error 217 about half the time when I close the program. I have no idea what the trigger is. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Access Violation Errors.

Just tried to replicate your context having created a group “No child, no spouse” to select from. Tried many times but got no error. Maybe it requires something else in the UI history to trigger it or it’s system dependent.

32-bit RM 10.0.7 Win 10 Home

I am 64-bit RM 10.0.7 Win 10 Pro. So I downloaded 32-bit RM 10.0.7. Guess what? The problem is now gone when I am using the the 32 bit version. I switched back to the 64-bit version, and the problem is back.

This is just testing with the left chevron problem in Descendant View. It’s much harder to test the “RM is tired” problem where the Access Violation Error occurs after doing the same thing for a long time. But I bet the same thing is true there as well. Namely, I bet the “RM is tired” problem happens on the 64-bit version and not on the 32-bit version. And of course this is Windows. I’m not able to test on a Mac which is 64-bit.

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On M4 mac all software current (64 bit) do not get your error.

Based on your info I tried both a 32-bit and 64-bit installation of RM10 in a Windows virtual instance, via Windows Sandbox (a great feature).

On my database test (shown in the video link above) the 32-bit version does not throw the AVE. The 64-bit version does.

So at least in our cases the 64-bitness is the problem. I have informed RM and opened a support ticket with them. They can easily replicate the AVE with my database so they should be able to isolate the source of the issue. Fixing it might be hard if it’s in some third-party library.

I’ll probably switch to the 32-bit version in the meantime.

For reference the two RootsMagic v10 (June 2025) .EXE filesizes are:

32-bit: 112,924KB (Properties 115,664,224 bytes)

64-bit: 131,509KB (Properties 134,664,816 bytes)

Speculation: Given that it’s so easy to replicate this issue in RM10 x64, I imagine that the devs are well aware of it - but it’s in some third-party stuff so they have to just wait for that to get sorted. In the meantime they recommend using the 32-bit version but don’t say why.

If so then they’re letting us waste a lot of time. IMHO if the 64-bit version has a known issue of this magnitude it should be marked as a beta; or the issue announced.

I have also switched to the 32-bit app for the time being.

Here is a bit of history. When RM8 was first released, the Mac version was available only as a 64-bit app and the Windows version was available only as a 32-bit app. There was a bit of discussion about why not just make them both be 64-bit. By this time, Apple had mandated that all apps be 64-bit and Microsoft had not. But some in the RM user community advocated for just making them both 64-bit, and and I was one of the advocates for that position.

It turned out that one reason the Windows app for RM8 was 32-bit was in order to support direct import from Legacy Family Tree. Legacy Family Tree is a Windows only app and it is a 32-bit app. The library RM uses to do a direct import from Legacy Family Tree is a 32-bit library. So by having the RM8 Windows app be a 32-bit, RM8 could support direct import from Legacy Family Tree on Windows and there only had to be one app for RM8 - namely, the 32-bit app. It was sometime subsequent to the original release of RM8 that RM became available both as a 32-bit app and as a 64-bit app.

I have been a user of the 64-bit app on Windows ever since. Little did I realize that by doing so I was getting these Address Violation Errors. It will be interesting so see how this gets fixed. It’s hard to picture what’s going on internally to cause the problem. I can picture the reverse, having the problem in the 32-app and not in the 64-bit app, but it’s hard to picture what’s really going on where the error is in the 64-bit app. It will also be interesting to see if there are still other causes of the Access Violation Errors after this problem is fixed.

I discovered that after installing the 32-app, the Windows Start button only sees the 32-bit app. The 64-bit app is still there, and originally my desktop and taskbar shortcuts both still pointed to the 64-bit app. But I have now changed the shortcuts to point the 32-bit app, and the only way I can start the 64-bit app now for testing is to go into C:\Program Files\RootsMagic 10.

I made a new shortcut with different icon to point to 64-bit … Star Trek Command icon :slight_smile:

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