Help with Winebottler hanging on new Imac (but not on old Mac mini)

I had an old mac mini 32 bit running Snow Leopard and an older Winebottler (I think it was 1.6.4) That worked first time with no bother

I've been using this older version of Winebottler successfully to bottle up various versions of a windows .exe that I am developing myself. That program involved sending emails and downloading stuff from the web. It always worked fine in the old winebottler and I was able to distribute the resulting .app to other users.

I have now bought a iMac 2013 running High Sierra and downloaded Winebottler 1.8.3, especially to take advantage of Wininet.dll being bundled into the system32 folder.

However, now whenever I try to bottle my program (even older versions of it) using Winebottler 1.8.3, the little black install progress window installs various things but gets as far as 'installing <my program name>.exe' and then hangs.

This is very disappointing as I thought upgrading the Mac and Winebottler would make everything work even better than before

I've gone into System Preferences | Security & Privacy and set 'Allow apps downloaded from AppStore and Identified developers' to true.
I don't have an anti virus program that could be blocking anything

Is there anything else I need to do to get Winebottler1.8.3 working correctly?


(I don't know all that much about Macs, only bought one in order to bottle my Windows program for distribution)

Line one answers all your problems. 32bit is g-o-n-e.

Notes to this version advise must be an Intel processor and maybe the mini is older?


https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33367/winebottler

Winebottler is no longer a viable way to run Windows apps on a Mac (in my opinion). I personally use CrossOver which does a much better job of bottling apps regardless if they're 32 bit or 64 bit. Windows (even Windows 10) can run both 32 bit and 64 bit apps. CrossOver was on sale through the Macworld Magazine store and still might be.

harryb2448 said:

Line one answers all your problems. 32bit is g-o-n-e.

Notes to this version advise must be an Intel processor and maybe the mini is older?


https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33367/winebottler

Click to expand...

Not sure I understand. The mac mini was 32 bit. That's why I bought a 64 bit iMac as the latest version of winebottler only runs on 64 bit machines with an Intel cpu, which the iMac has

Yes, I agree Crossover is nicer if you only want to run Windows programs on your own machine.

However I need to take my Windows program and have it run on any Mac.

I cannot ask all my users who have Macs to buy Crossover. That's where Winebottler was/is so handy as it produces a stand alone .app containing everything needed to run the Windows program on a Mac.

That's where Winebottler was/is so handy as it produces a stand alone .app

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I don't know where you got your Winebottler from but the recent users comment and a quick download try at the developers site is sure not at all positive.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33367/winebottler
and
http://winebottler.kronenberg.org

Also, I wonder if apple's OS security is preventing any proper install or is it on hold or disabled to allow it??

And finally, maybe the user's comment mentioned PortingKit would be a better choice???

http://portingkit.com/en/





- Patrick
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pm-r said:

Also, I wonder if apple's OS security is preventing any proper install or is it on hold or disabled to allow it??

And finally, maybe the user's comment mentioned PortingKit would be a better choice???

http://portingkit.com/en/

- Patrick
======

Click to expand...

It was partly Mac's security that I was wondering about, hence posting here as I am new to Macs (not to Windows) but I think I've resolved those problems now as I can get a very simple demo executable to work.

I have also found a partial success with my proper program.
Winebottler can package up either
(a) a windows install file,
(b) an windows executable or
(c) a windows executable and all the other files in the same folder.

I discovered that it seems to be (c) that makes it hang but not (b).

So if I have an executable and say a help file or a text file in the same folder and try to package them all then ver 1.8.3 will hang (unlike ver 1.6.4), but if I remove those and just have the executable in the folder then 1.8.3 works fine.
So now I'm working on my windows program to see if I can eliminate all external file dependencies.

BTW
I did have a look at PortingKit but to be honest I couldn't make much sense of what it did, or how it did it. It seems though that it only works for games and only those games that it already knows about. It didn't seem to be able to work with an arbitrary Windows executable.

Still, I've found a workaround to my problem so thanks for all the help.

Still, I've found a workaround to my problem so thanks for all the help.

Click to expand...

Congratulations with all your experimenting and success.

I only had exposure with some Mac WINE stuff to get a basically Windows fish cataloging software working for a Mac scuba friend. It was a challenge and a half that I never want to experience again thanks. I'm too old for that sort of stuff these days.





- Patrick
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pm-r said:

Congratulations with all your experimenting and success.
... I'm too old for that sort of stuff these days.

- Patrick
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Yes, I'm getting on a bit now but I'm developing a Windows system to remotely manage a SQL database that deals with all the membership data for my mountaineering association , sending emails, updating member data, sending stuff to the British Mountaineering Council etc.. Its used by about ten people on our committee.

Works great for those that have Windows machines and for the two that have Macs I have got it working using winebottler on a imac I bought especially for the purpose. However I had to rework the program to remove any external file references, such as DLLs to do encryption etc and make it into a single executable.

Just tried again with a very small demo program executable that I wrote to show the contents of an Access database. The program on its own works fine in winebottler but if I try to package the windows exe and the MSaccess database it references into the same bottle then winebottler hangs.

This is a real shame as version 1.6 worked fine in this respect.

This is a real shame as version 1.6 worked fine in this respect.

Click to expand...

I assume that you contacted the developer for any help or suggestions. Maybe they can fix it so that it works better.

One has to take care of those aging brain cells. ;D




- Patrick
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I think I have resolved this. I upgraded to Winebottler ver 1.8.4 and it now accepts all the files in the folder.
I didn't do this before as 1.8.4 is still in Beta whereas 1.8.3 was billed as the latest stable version.

Can't find anything in the change logs about this issue being fixed in 1.8.4 though.

Never mind, so long as it works.