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Please Read This Before Installing Your Program
It is important to keep your serial number and password in a safe place in case you ever need to re-install your program.

When upgrading to Solar Fire Gold it’s best to leave your older Solar Fire installed for the time being so that you can import your settings as well as your charts from the previous version.

How to Install Your New Solar Fire Software
1. Click on the link given on the download page and save the file on your desktop (if it asks you where to save). Then doubleclick on the file to install on your computer.

2. When prompted to do so, enter your name, serial number and password for the program exactly as they appear in the email sent to you. Type in your name using precisely the spelling, spacing and capitalization that is given. When entering the password, remember that the letters are always capitalized, and always use numerical zeros (“0”), not the letter “O.” Use the numbers at the top of your keyboard rather than the numeric keypad.

3. When a program is installing, go along with where it wants to install. Do not attempt to install it anywhere else. Unlike previous versions, Solar Fire Gold installs its program files under the Programs folder, and its charts, settings and other user files under the My Documents folder.

4. Important: Shut down and restart Windows before opening Solar Fire Gold.

5. If, after installing Solar Fire Gold, you have any problem with the astro-glyphs, close the program and then restart Windows (again). The next time you open Solar Fire Gold the problem should be cured.

6. After installing any program (and periodically thereafter) check Astrolabe’s website, http://alabe.com/downloads/, for the latest free updates. With Solar Fire Gold, you can access online updates from the program’s main screen by selecting Help menu > Check for Updates on Web (or Check Web for Updates).

Getting Help with Your Astrolabe Programs

“How do I…?” Questions To get help in using a program, please first press F1 for the help window within the program, or consult the program’s user guide. If you don’t have a printed manual, you can download one on the Solar Fire download page or use the electronic manual that is in your new copy of Solar Fire Gold. You can view and print the manual if you have installed Adobe Reader – a free program that you can get on the CD, from the http://alabe.com website, or at http://get.adobe.com/reader/.

Questions about Astrological Techniques You can find answers to many common questions and problems on the web by visiting http://alabe.com/support or http://alabe.com/forums either directly, or through the Solar Fire Help menu. If you can’t find an answer there, you can ask a question on the forum or submit a support ticket to have someone answer your question.

Troubleshooting Problems If your program doesn’t seem to be working right, the easiest first line of action is to restart your computer. If this doesn’t help, try downloading the latest program updates as described in step 5 above. Easy to do, these actions solve a surprising number of difficulties.

Many other difficulties are resolved by reinstalling the program. First, try reinstalling the program without uninstalling the previous installation. If the problem persists, uninstall before reinstalling. (To uninstall: On the Windows XP desktop, select Start button>Settings>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs>[name of program]>Remove button. On the Vista desktop, select Start orb >Control Panel>Programs and Features>[name of program]>Uninstall button. To uninstall Solar Fire Gold you can just click Start button>Programs>Solar Fire Gold folder>Uninstall icon. When being uninstalled Solar Fire Gold lets you choose to also remove your Solar Fire chart and user files. Seldom is it necessary to remove these. With earlier Solar Fire versions, charts and user files are removed manually. (This, too, is usually unnecessary.) After reinstalling, again check the web for updates.

As a Last Resort…. Phone support is available Mon-Fri, 11am-4 pm U.S. Eastern time at (508) 896-5081. You may also submit a written query in a support ticket. To do so, visit the Astrolabe home page at http://alabe.com. At the upper left, select Support and then Submit a Ticket.

How to Submit a Query  In any written or phoned query, please be specific. Always include the Astrolabe software title and version, and a clear description of what result you were trying to achieve.

If you have a problem or think you have found a bug, please include the Windows version, exactly what you did leading up to the problem, the results you got, and any error messages that appeared. Sometimes when you get an error message you will be asked to “Click here for more detailed information.” This extra information, especially the filenames that are shown, can be very helpful in solving your problem.

Moving Your Old Charts and Settings to Solar Fire Gold

If you still have your older version of Solar Fire installed
When you’ve installed Solar Fire Gold on the computer where you still have your old Solar Fire version, you can quickly move your old charts and settings to Solar Fire Gold as follows:

1. From the Solar Fire Gold main screen, select Utilities menu > Import Charts and Settings.

2. Check off the items you want. If you aren’t sure, check all the file types and select Rename and Keep Existing Files. (For more help with this, press the F1 key.)

3. Click on Import, and the charts and other files that you designated will be copied into subfolders under the Solar Fire User Files folder that Solar Fire Gold places in your My Documents folder.

If you don’t still have your older version of Solar Fire installed
If you’ve uninstalled your old Solar Fire but have not taken the final step of deleting its chart and settings files (which are deleted separately from the uninstallation), it’s easiest to transfer your old Solar Fire data by reinstalling your older Solar Fire and then using Solar Fire Gold’s easy import utility as above.

If you’ve installed Solar Fire Gold on a different computer from your old Solar Fire
You can use a CD, USB flash memory stick, network or other media to transfer your chart and settings files from your old computer to a new one on which you’ve already installed Solar Fire Gold. A memory stick is easiest. This method involves copying all your Solar Fire folders to the new computer, which, if you have extra asteroids installed, may require 100 Mb or more on whatever transfer media you use.

1. Copy your entire C:\SFDeluxe (or Solfire5 or Solfire) folder (including its various subfolders) onto the memory stick or other media. If you are using a CD and don’t have a CD-burning program, you can try the following:


a) On the Windows desktop of the computer that you are copying from, right-click on the Solar Fire icon.

b) In the popup window, select Properties.

c) Click on the Find Target button.

d) On the listing of files, click on the top menu on Edit and then on Select All.

e) Click again on Edit and then on Copy.

f) Open up your My Computer icon and find the icon for your removable media drive or CD drive.

g) Right-click on the icon for the removable media and select Paste. It may take several minutes for all the files to copy.

h) If you selected a CD-R disk, you’ll see a message saying that you have files ready to be burned. Click on this, but don't start the burning process until the files are finished copying. Then, to start the burning process, click on File and then on Write these files to CD.

2. Now insert the transfer media into the new computer and cancel any menus that pop up.

3. Open Solar Fire Gold, and select Utilities menu > Import Charts and Settings.

4. In the Where to import from box at the top, click on Other location… and then browse for the location of your CD drive, flash memory, or network. The essential file that you need to find and open is solfire.exe.

5. Under What to import, specify the types of files you want to import. (Usually, you would check all check boxes to import everything possible.) Also specify how to handle existing files of the same name. (This enables you to preserve your own modifications to chart and settings files that originally came with Solar Fire. The safest option to choose is Rename and keep existing files.) Then click the Import button, and your old files will be copied into the proper folders in Solar Fire Gold.

This method will work not only with your chart files, but also with most of your other user files, including wheel and page designs, point and aspect files, etc. It may not, however, transfer some settings on the Preferences window (such as your default place and house system).

The transfer procedure is simplified by the use of the Astrobackup utility, which has been updated to work with Solar Fire Gold. Go to http://Alabe.com/Astrobackup for the Astrobackup program and a short instructional video.

If you’re transferring Solar Fire Gold charts and settings to Solar Fire Gold on another computer
Perhaps you want to use Solar Fire Gold on both your desktop and your laptop. Your software license permits you to install an Astrolabe program on more than one computer as long as both computers are yours and the Astrolabe program won’t be used on both machines at the same time. Or perhaps you’ve installed Solar Fire Gold on one computer, and now you’re replacing your older computer with a more up-to-date model. In this case, you are responsible for uninstalling Solar Fire (and any other Astrolabe programs) from your old computer prior to discarding the outdated machine.

When you are transferring charts and settings files from one copy of Solar Fire Gold to another, the procedure is quite simple. In Solar Fire Gold all of your charts and user files are kept in your My Documents folder in a subfolder called Solar Fire User Files. Therefore, all you need to do is move the contents of your My Documents folder from the old computer to the new computer--something you will probably be doing anyway when you’re switching to a new computer. A technician who is helping you to do this may transfer your My Documents folder as a routine procedure. In case you are doing it on your own, Microsoft includes a program called the Documents and Settings Transfer Wizard that makes this quite easy. See the Windows Help for more information about this program. You can move the files either before or after you install Solar Fire Gold. If you aren’t transferring your entire My Documents folder, you can transfer just your Solar Fire User Files folder along with its subfolders.

Remember that if more than one person is using Solar Fire on a computer and they log onto Windows using different user names, then each person will have his own personal collection of user files. In that case you would need to log on as each user and then do the transfer procedure for each user.

Uninstalling Your Old Version of Solar Fire
It’s best to leave the old Solar Fire on your computer until you have transferred your charts and
settings. When you upgrade to Solar Fire Gold, a whole new version of the program is installed under your main Program Files folder, and all your charts and settings files are installed in a new Solar Fire User Files folder under My Documents. Until you uninstall it, your older version of Solar Fire stays installed on your hard disk. This gives you a chance to get used to the new version and to transfer your old chart files and settings to it at your leisure.

When you’re ready to uninstall your previous version of Solar Fire, follow the directions given in its Help menu under Uninstalling. In Solar Fire 5 and 6, uninstalling is a two-step process.

1. First you use the Windows uninstall utility to get rid of the program as you would any other program. (On the Windows XP desktop, click Start button > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > [earlier version of Solar Fire] > Remove button. On the Vista desktop, click Start orb > Control Panel > Programs and Features > [earlier version of Solar Fire] > Uninstall button.)

2. Then, after you have had a chance to import your old charts and settings into Solar Fire Gold, you can manually delete the remaining files (including charts and settings files that you created or modified while using your old Solar Fire) from your old Solar Fire folder. To do so, right-click the Start button on your Windows desktop and click on Explore. In left-hand pane, scroll down to the SFDeluxe or SolFire5 (or 2 or 3 or 4) folder and click on it to highlight it. Then press the Delete key to send the old Solar Fire folders, subfolders and remaining files to Trash.

Using Solar Fire Gold and Solar Fire 6 Charts in Other Programs
Solar Fire versions 4 and 5 saved charts in a file format that was compatible with a number of outside programs. However, in order to accommodate the new life-event lists, beginning in Solar Fire 6 Deluxe the default chart-file format was changed from the old .Cht filename extension to a new file type that ends in .SFcht. The new .SFcht files are not readable by (and do not even show up in the menus of) Nova Chartwheels, Astrolabe Reports and many other programs.
If you’ll only be using your Solar Fire charts within Solar Fire, just go ahead and let Solar Fire Gold save charts in the newer .SFcht format. However, if you want your Solar Fire charts to be freely usable with the other programs without any extra conversion steps, you can tell Solar Fire Gold to save charts in the older Solar Fire 4/5 .Cht format as follows:

From Solar Fire Gold’s main screen, select Preferences menu > Edit Settings > Charts tab, and under Chart Conversion to SFv6/v7 Format select Never convert – keep existing older chart formats. This will then be the default setting (which you can override on an individual basis if you wish).

Also, whenever you create new chart files you will be asked if you want to use the new Solar Fire v6/v7 format. To create the more compatible Solar Fire v4v/5 format files, answer “No” to this question. Later, to add life-event lists to your natal charts for use within Solar Fire Gold, you can always make copies of your charts in the newer .SFCht format. Here’s how:
From Solar Fire Gold’s main screen go to the Utilities menu > Chart Import/Export > Options tab. To convert the files to .SFCht format, select Create v6/7 format chart files. Then, while still in the ET Chart Conversion Utility window, go to the Import From and Save To tabs to specify the folders you want your Solar Fire charts to come from and be saved into. Then click on Convert. A copy of your .Cht-format charts will be made in the newer .SFCht format, and then you will be able to attach a list of life events to a natal chart.