The other day I was looking at a summit report and clicked on Google Earth to find that it had stopped working for me. It seems that this has become a common problem with Windows 7 users and wondered if anyone may have come up with a solution as I haven’t been able to find one on the internet that works. I am running Windows 7 Pro on a 64 bit laptop. The program begins to load but freezes before the picture of the Earth appears.
The Google Earth program (which runs on your PC, not the web) has always been a resource hog. I remember using it when defining summits in VK2/HU region some years ago. It was horribly slow on the PC I had then.
What may have happened is that with Windows updates or the installation of another application, a DLL file used by the Google Earth program may have been overwritten or removed.
My suggestion is that you de-install Google earth from your PC, download the very latest version from Google and install that. Don’t just try to install over the top of the existing version, make sure you de-install the current version first and then do a reboot of the PC. After that install the latest version of Google earth to your PC do another reboot and hopefully it’ll work again.
Good luck & 73 Ed DD5LP.
Thanks Ed, I’ve been all over the web trying to find fixes and that was one of the ones I tried with no luck. Google Earth is quite important to me as a hiker and activator, but I hate to buy a new Windows 10 Laptop when this machine does everything I need. I’ll keep looking. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Google will notice that many of us are having problems and put their own fix out. Maybe.
73, -Paul
I found a specific Windows 10 page where it says it has a version for windows 10 but also says it works with Windows 7 - it may be worth trying as it’ll be the latest version?
UPDATE: - don’t try to install from that link! - during the install phase it tries to install other programs so I aborted - always better to go directly to the authors - so this link should be safer.
https://www.google.com/earth/
AHA - with the latest version of Google earth, it is mandatory that you use Google Chrome to run it, so you need to install Google Chrome (latest version first) and then Google Earth.
And it’s now web based, not a local app!
It runs from here (in the Chrome Browser) https://earth.google.com/web/
Whether this is “better” than the local version will remain to be seen. It "should work better on lower powered PCS as long as you have a good Internet connection.
I wonder if the summits page links will work with this web-based version of Google Earth? NO it doesn’t! assigning Chrome to open the kml file you get when you click on Google Earth from a Summit page simply opens it as a text file, it doesn’t know to open the (now online) Google earth to open the file.
73 Ed.
Update - even accessing the summit page via Chrome, clicking on Google earth and setting Chrome as the program to open KML files, still open the kml file as text. I think the Google Chrome links are not going to work any more from the SOTA Summit pages as they currently are set.
i am using google earth v 7.1.8.3036 32bit and it works without problems on my windows 7 64bit os …
73 martin, oe5reo
Hi Martin,
I take it that’s the locally install on the PC code? It looks to me as if the latest version is ONLY web-based and actually Chrome Browser based.
As long as one still has the old local code - it will still be fine (at least on Windows 7). Do you still have the install file package for the local install of Google earth and if so can you send it to Paul AD4IE to see if it solves his problems?
I’m not sure what we can do going forward if Google drop the local program.
73 Ed.
If you are reinstalling I belive you have to manually delete the cache as this may not be deleted with an uninstall or instal over the top.
Just a thought,
Compton
Maybe give those a try:
The following installers do not auto-update (not recommended).
73 Joe
Ok, I have now found my old Google Earth Install tag from 2015 - ran that and it went off to Google and downloaded and installed v 7.3.1.4507 (64-bit) (I am running Windows 10 Home 64 bit).
So it looks as if the PC based code is still available, simply not what Google “wants” you to use! They prefer you to use the web based one it seems.
I’ve just tried it from the SOTA summit page link, set Google Earth Pro as the default application for kml files and it all still works.
73 Ed.
An Adjunct, “Flooding” is noiw included within Google Earth rather than being an additional plug-in - it’s documented nicely here: Google Earth Design: Flood Simulation HowTo
This is very useful when try to find where the Activation Zone of a summit is - or whether it meets the 150m rule.
But at the bottom left, there is a “small print” link “Download Google Earth on desktop” which leads to the traditional version, and there is still some encouragement to use it in the “Help” section of the web version. So perhaps all is not lost.
Martyn M1MAJ
Hi Martyn,
I didn’t see that link, but as per my last post, running the old Google earth stub installer downloads and installs the latest local (i.e. on PC disk) version.
Ed.
I do not have it on my harddisc but I found a donwload link (did not try it):
http://www.filepuma.com/download/google_earth_7.1.8.3036-14008/
73 Martin, OE5REO
Thanks Martin and Ed, After making sure there was nothing from Google Earth on my computer and all programs closed I downloaded and ran the installer and got an error 1603. Tried a second time with same result. -Paul, AD4IE
So post “got an error 1603” into Google and see what it means…
Hi Paul,
did you reboot the PC after de-installing the old version of Google earth and prior to installing the new one?
It could be that either a DLL is still in memory or part of the de-install might have to happen on a restart (i.e. before the GUI and desktop is loaded).
73 Ed.