I have several years of research lost unless I can solve a compatibility issue of loading an older program to win 10 or 11. It was established in win 7 with the legacy IE browser with the full run files in tact

Question

I lost years worth of research when my computer, win 7, crashed and the publisher, Palladium, went out of business. Recently I found a backup copy of all the data. Tried to change the language of the data to another program with no luck. The program is Ultimate Family tree. Unfortunately, the program won't load on win 10 and above. Stops when it tries to configure the browser, IE, which is no longer supported or available. I had an older computer with win 7 on it that I dug out, but someone had upgraded to win 10 and there is apparently no was back to win 7. The bottom line is, I need to load that program to a window 7 environment with a full version of internet Explorer. I don't need the explorer because I don't do any research from that program. But all my data is lost unless I can run it on that program. And the program will not setup without finding the internet explore before downloading. I'm have tried a dozen different solutions, but nothing works. If I can get past the Browser setup, I will be very happy.

Answer 1

Welcome jim adams,

I understand how frustrating it can be when you are trying to recover research data from Ultimate Family Tree, but the application cannot complete installation on newer versions of Windows because it expects Internet Explorer to be present during setup. 

Before proceeding, could you please clarify:     

• Do you still have the original Ultimate Family Tree installation media or setup files? 
• Does the setup fail with a specific error message, or does it stop when checking/configuring Internet Explorer? 

In the meantime, you can try these steps below to troubleshoot the issue:  

Option 1: Run the installer in Compatibility Mode.  

• Right-click the setup file 
• Select Properties > Compatibility 
• Enable Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows 7 
• Enable Run this program as an administrator 

Option 2: Check whether Internet Explorer components are enabled.  

• Open Control Panel > Programs and Features 
• Select Turn Windows features on or off 
• Verify Internet Explorer 11 is enabled if the option is available 

Option 3: Try installing the application inside a Windows 7 virtual machine.  

• Since Windows 7 is EOS since 2020, you can try this workaround instead 
• Create a Windows 7 virtual machine using virtualization software 
• Install Internet Explorer within the Windows 7 environment 
• Attempt the Ultimate Family Tree installation there 

Option 4: Check whether the program data files can be opened directly.  

• Locate the backup data files 
• Identify the file extensions used by Ultimate Family Tree 
• Some genealogy applications may be able to import or convert older formats 

Option 5: Review the installer contents.  

• If the installer is a self-extracting package, extract the contents to a folder 
• Check whether the program files can be installed manually without the browser configuration step 

I hope the steps above help you deal with your issue.  

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Yes". If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".   

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.