FreeHand and Mac OS X 10.6.2

Our reference systems (Intel iMac and Intel MacPro) got updated today to Mac OS X 10.6.2. After starting FreeHand 11.0.2 Build 92 it took a while bouncing, but it comes up and is running normally since the first start.

UPDATE (January 25, 2010)

We have now gathered some informations about possible problems with FreeHand on Snow Leopard:

FreeHand does not start anymore
This is the most common problem encountered so far. Mostly it happens after a complete new installation of system 10.6 and FreeHand. FreeHand does not start, its icon stays bouncing in the dock. Adobe has published a solution to this. Basically they say that the activation component of the software is incompatible with Mac OS X 10.6 preventing the application from launching successfully. Adobe recommends the download and installation of this Registration File. Install it into “Macintosh HD\Library\Application Support\Macromedia”.

Usually right after installing Snow Leopard, when first trying to start a PPC application such as FreeHand 11, the system automatically asks for the installation of Rosetta and takes you through the steps necessary (download, installation). There may be rare circumstances when this does not happen. So make sure you have Rosetta installed, it is also available as optional install from the Snow Leopard install disc.

Under some circumstances only following a precise step by step solution may help, as reported by some users:

1. Your FreeHand application folder should be removed and deleted. Do also remove and delete “Mac HD/Library/Application Support/Macromedia”

2. Make a new installation of FreeHand, without starting it.

3. Place a new Folder “Macromedia” in “Mac HD/Library/Application Support/”

4. Place the “FreeHand MXa Registration” file from the Adobe solution (mentioned above) inside the new folder and start FreeHand.

Registration not working (and/or FreeHand not starting)
Under some circumstances, all it needs may be a volume registration number. There has been spread around a nuber on many forums, also on Adobe.com. The number is WPD700-59309-14394-64786

Photoshop Copy-Paste
Copy images from Photoshop directly into FreeHand may not work anymore, there are reports of this resulting in false-color images. Solution to this is going through export and import of an image file. The other way round (copy FreeHand content into Photoshop) is working fine.

Crashing during file opening
Some users report FreeHand crashing while trying to open any/certain FreeHand documents. This may be because of font issues. Try it without user/fonts installed. It may also be because of documents from older FreeHand versions. Try if it works with documents from your actual FreeHand. We have no reports if users affected by this problem were able to solve it.

Tags: bouncing, crashes, freehand, Mac OS X 10.6.2, not starting, problems, Snow Leopard, updates, Windows 7