The Author – Bart Busschots
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Oct
9
CrossOver Mac Beta 2 – Problematic Upgrade but Worth It
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 9, 2006 at 6:31 pm
CodeWeavers recently sent round a mailing about the release of the second beta version of CrossOver Mac. I didn’t have time to play with it straight away but over the weekend I gave it a go. The upgrade was not problem free but it did fix one of my problems with CrossOver, IE now seems to work properly.
[tags]Apple, CrossOver, CrossOverMac, OS X, IE[/tags]
I looked in the email that was sent out, I looked on the download page and I looked in the .dmg file that the new beta was distributed in an nowhere did I see any instructions on upgrading so I assumed that it would just be a case of copying the new app over the old one. Not so. When I tried that I got an error telling me that the file CrossOver CD Helper was in use and could not be replaced. The replace stopped at this point and left me with an incomplete CrossOver that simply did not work at all. However, a quick trip to the command-line sorted me out with a combination of ps -aux and kill (my favourite command 🙂 ). However, if killing processes from the command-line is not your thing then you can also kill the CrossOver CD Helper process which is preventing the completion of the replacement of the old version with the new from the GUI. To do this launch the Activity Monitor App in Applications -> Utilities. In the list of processes you see look for the one named CrossOver CD Helper, select it, and then click the button labeled Quit Process in the menu bar at the top of the window.
Once this process is stopped you’ll be able to copy the new Beta in over the old one without problems and all should be well. You should not even loose your settings or bottles.
All the apps that used to work for me still work with the new beta but as well as that IE can now render my home page which it couldn’t do before. Scrolling with the track-pad/scroll-wheel also works now. In the first beta version this caused things to go very very weird. You can see IE running in CrossOver Mac rendering my home page in the screen-shot below. Unfortunately still no joy with FruityLoops. However, the new Beta is an improvement over the old and a step in the right direction. Lets hope things keep improving!
[…] Crossover Beta 2 RA Bart inspired me with an article on his blog to give Crossover from Codeweavers another try. I had tried it a while back and it was pretty boogery, lots of stuff stopped working, but he seemed inspired so I figured I’d jump back in. I also heard from 2SmartChix.com on their Views from the Coop podcast that they interviewed jeremy White of Codeweavers, and that a new beta version was out there. I guess I shoudl remind everyone what the heck I’m talking about. Crossover is an application that allows you to run Windows applications on a Macintosh, without running Windows at all. for example, Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer at version 5 for the Mac, but with Crossover you can run IE 6 for Windows. Back on show #61 I did a full walkthrough of how to install apps under Crossover, so check that out if you want to hear and see how it’s done. I did include a screen snapshot on podfeet of IE6 running on my Mac with Windows Media Player (the Windows version) playing the Nosillacast if you’d like to check that out. […]