RM hangs after failing to connect to FamilySearch

RootsMagic
1

I have just had a problem for a second time in three days which has caused RM to hang after which I cannot re-open it.

The problem started when I tried to search for matches in FS for a person not yet linked, using the option to right click from the person screen.

I had not been logged on to FS for a while, and, in retrospect, would have expected to be asked to log in again. In the event, I got the RM FamilySearch screen telling me that it was looking for matches. It just hung there.

After several minutes waiting, I closed the screen and the application became unresponsive. I closed RM from the Windows task manager, but it would not re-open. (Hovering over the RM icon in the task bar gives this

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This time I eventually solved the problem by repeatedly closing RM and then reopening it. Last time, I only got it to start again by re-installing it.

Have other people had this problem? It seems to be related to the new functionality in RM 10.0.7.

RM 10.0.7. 64 bit Windows 11 pro.

2

Alan that is what I thought BUT made sure I was logged out of Ancestry and Family Search on my computer-- then went into RM 10 and tried both and they worked-- evidently you now stay logged into both until you hit LOG OUT at the top of the screen

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I did try Family Search on several of my databases and had no problems BUT I am sure your database is much larger

RM 10.0.7. 64 bit Windows 11

3

I guess that it happens when FamilySearch has you as logged out but RM for some reason thinks that you are still logged in.

To test this, I left RM overnight. First thing in the morning, I went to FamilySearch central which told me that I was logged in

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Then I went to FamilySearch in my browser, which told me that I was logged out

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Then I clicked on the FamilySearch icon for an individual

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and just to prove me wrong, the screen opened with no problem

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I had frequent problems with RM7 freezing when linking to FS. At that time I just closed RM from the file manager and re-started it. What was new this couple of times was the problem re-starting.

4

I haven’t seen any reports of this issue. The first thing I would check is your security software. See if something is interfering with RM access to the internet.

5

Thanks for your suggestion, but I am pretty sure that it is not a problem with the firewall. (I checked the other day and there are no restrictions.)

I also don’t see how a problem with the firewall could stop FS from re-starting properly after being closed from task manager.

I will see whether it happens again.

6

My problem has just happened again, and with a bit more experimentation I understand a little more about it, although I am still puzzled.

As usual, I clicked on one of the FS links from RM’s people page and again found RM hanging. I then checked FS in my browser to see whether I was logged on, and found that I could not access it. I could access all other internet pages I tried, but sites like down detector indicated that FS was up and running. The problem was not with my PC, because I couldn’t access FS from my phone either. However, if I switched my phone’s wifi connection off and relied on its 4G network link, I could get to FS. Something is plainly intermittently wrong with my router (although re-starting that doesn’t seem to work) or my ISP.

Anyway, when I set up a hot spot connection to allow my PC to connect to the internet via my phone’s 4G network, I could open FS in my PC’s browser and log on. At this point, RM was still hanging, but when I closed the screen, it did not become un-responsive as before, and on re-trying, I could open the FamilySearch Person Tools page in FS and see the data.

I then switched the hotspot connection off, and reverted to using my wifi connection/ISP. As before, I couldn’t open the FS web page, but much to my surprise, I could continue to use the FamilySearch Person Tools page to view more data from FS.

After a while, however, FS once again seized up and once again did not open properly after I had closed it from the task manager. It eventually did open properly after I had reconnected my PC to my phone’s 4G connection, although I don’t know whether this was a factor or not.

So it seems that there are two separate problems, an intermittent problem in either my router or ISP’s connection to FamilySearch which I will have to investigate further, and a problem with RM when the connection to FS is not working. FS does not time out as it should, and worse still it doesn’t start cleanly when it is re-opened.

Edit a little later: FamilySearch will now open in my PC’s browser through my wifi and ISP as usual. I am no closer to finding out why it wouldn’t open earlier.

7

The past couple of days, I noticed that even tho I was logged in thru RM, FamilySearch was either dog slow or unresponsive.

Everyone showed in the Index but the windows for MyRootsMagic Person & My FamilySearch Person were empty.

So I moved on to doing something else.

As I’m typing this it looks ok now but it’s bedtime :slight_smile:

8

FamilySearch is very particular about which browsers and versions of browsers it will work with. The ones supported must be current or no less than one version behind. Not positive this applies in your case but here are two FamilySearch articles on this. One of the reasons we no longer support Windows 7 is because of outdated browsers.

1 Like
9

Thanks, but it’s not the browser. The problem is intermittent (FS is working now), and when it happens, I can’t connect via any browser. Also as I wrote yesterday, for one time at least I could connect via 4G but not via my broadband internet connection.

The problem may be in my router or with my ISP, or it may be something to do with FS’s internet security. Recently, more and more companies have been using services like Cloudfare to protect against hacking and denial of service attacks. I don’t have a problem with Cloudfare, but several other services do seem to cause problems for me connecting from Taiwan. Some websites that I have been using for ages now give me an error message like ‘connections from your country are not allowed’. I don’t know why anyone would try to block access from Taiwan; we may be caught up in blocks on China.

10

People are probably not interested in my particular problem, but it has happened again repeatedly today, usually for about 20 minutes at a time. I have been working on a branch of my family which emigrated to New Zealand, and very interestingly, the New Zealand Government’s Births, Marriages and Deaths website has gone down at the same time each time. The moment one comes back, the other does too. I have only tried a couple of times, but when I have tried, I have been able to connect to both sites via my phone’s 4G connection. No other web sites that I can find have been affected; I have been listening to internet radio uninterrupted throughout.

I think I can now rule my router out as the source of the problem - nothing I do to that appears to make any difference. I guess that the problem must either be with my ISP, or with a service or with some common internet security layer used by both the NZ Government and FamilySearch.

Of direct interest here, is RM’s response. It ought to be able to cope with a network interruption. Not to be able to cope is a bug. Not to re-start cleanly after being closed down is an important bug. Please could this be added to the list for development.

If anyone doubts that this happens, it is easy to experiment for yourselves; work with FS via Rootsmagic and turn your internet connection off between operations.

11

RM’s graceless behaviour when Internet connection is disrupted has been an issue ever since services were added that require login. That’s over a decade ago…

Have you tried a VPN? Might address your hypothesis about geographical blocking.

12

I will probably resort to using a VPN if this continues.

As I mentioned in my first post, I am used to having to close RM after a connection hangs. That is bad enough. What is new and in my opinion totally unsupportable is that I could not subsequently re-open RM without re-installing it. This is much worse than just being graceless.