Monday, November 30, 2009

FTM 2009 Error Message when Un-Installing


Family Tree Maker 2010



Now that I am running Family Tree Maker 2010 on my computer, I decided to uninstall Family Tree Maker 2009 to free up some space on my hard drive. FTM 2010 does not install over FTM 2009, rather it creates a separate folder taking up extra space.

I am running Windows XP. When I went to the Add/Delete Programs in my Control Panel and tried to delete FTM 2009, I got the error message "Error Reading Setup Initialization File". Uh-oh. Since I am trying to delete this file, I am not sure why I would get a setup error.


I went to the Knowledge Base for FTM and searched for "Error Reading Setup Initialization File". Nothing there. Not for installing or un-installing.

I searched Google. Everything I read about this message pointed to a problem with a download. But I hadn't downloaded FTM2009. I installed it from a disk. And I was trying to uninstall.

Not knowing what else to do, I put the FTM 2009 disk into my CD drive and clicked to install (even though it was already installed). thinking perhaps I could re-install that might help me get a successful delete. A few minutes after inserting the disk, I got the option to install or delete the program. I chose to delete the program, and it was then successfully deleted from my computer with no error messages.

If you run into the error message "Error Reading Setup Initialization File" when trying to uninstall an older version of FTM using the Add/Delete on the Control Panel, try using the FTM disk to install, and then choose "uninstall" from the list of options.