Application Support for Yardi

NOTE: Yardi has announced the end of support for the Yardi Advantage and Yardi Professional applications as of December 31, 2012. If you would like to consider another Pervasive-based property management solution, we recommend going with SKYLINE Property Management.

Officially, the Yardi DOS-based applications are only provided and supported on Btrieve 6.15. On 11/21/2005, we spoke with David in technical support at Yardi (in Toronto) who informed us that the application should run on ANY version of the Pervasive database, as long as it supports the Btrieve calls. He indicated that he had no problem with users running on Pervasive.SQL V8.0, but urged that the end user downloaded the 30-day trial and tested the software on a COPY of the database before purchasing and installing. He also had these comments:

• Yardi will ONLY provide support for the database versions that came with the software, i.e. Btrieve 6.15 or Pervasive.SQL V7 or Pervasive.SQL 2000i. As such, they may not be able to read files generated by Pervasive.SQL V8 or PSQLv9 if you should ever need to send your database to them for support. There are two ways to address this: 1) Configure the database engine to create files in the Btrieve 6.x format (and forgo one of the great speed benefits of the Pervasive.SQL engine), or 2) If you do ever need to send you files to Yardi for support, they'll need to be down-converted with the Rebuild Utility to the V6 format. Of course, you should also weigh this with the number of times that you've needed to send files to Yardi for support in the past.
• If the customer decides to upgrade the database version and then has ANY database-related problem, Yardi will not support this issue and may recommend that the user contact Pervasive Software or some other support agency.
• Yardi doesn't want you running this old software any more anyway -- they want you running one of their newer versions. They are unsure exactly how long they will support this old release and urge you to bite the bullet now and get off of the old software.

Based on these issues, each site will need to make their own decision and perform their own testing of the application. Goldstar Software will be happy to help in any way we can with this process! We *do* have customers currently running on Pervasive.SQL V8.7 and Pervasive PSQL v9.1 successfully, and we'll be happy to help you get upgraded as well.

*The abbreviations used on the columns above include the Workstation Engine (WSE), Workgroup Engine (WGE), and Client/Server Engine (CSE). Not all engines exist in all versions, and these are marked with N/A. Items with a NO are unsupported; items with YES are supported. Items with NR are not recommended; items with R are recommended. Items with no entry are unknown at this time. P indicates that testing is in progress for this release.

Important Note Regarding PSQL Versions: We WERE able to get the older YARDI application running on Pervasive.SQL V8.5 for a customer. We have also been able to get it running on PSQL v9, PSQLv10, and PSQLv11, with seemingly no ill effects. The secret is to FIRST install the new engine, then clean up the older 6.x components. You will then receive an error that Yardi does not support running on this database version. You must then set up the registry to force the requester version information to Btrieve 6.15 for the two applications Y.EXE and UTIL.EXE. Windows 98 users may need to do the same for KERNEL32.DLL. Users of PSQLv9 and above will also need to rebuild any older Btrieve 5.x files to 6.x or newer format prior to accessing the system.

Important Note Regarding Purge/Rebuild: The Yardi application has a known flaw with the purge/rebuild functionality which causes computers to completely fail if this process is interrupted in the slightest way. (Yes, this sounds very odd, but is very true -- even clicking on another application can cause an irreversible hang.) When running these processes, you should disable your screen saver, your computer's hibernation/sleep settings, and Monitor-off settings. You should also disable anything that may contain a "pop-up", such as web browsers, instant messaging clients, and the like. Once the process is started, you should NOT touch the system in any way until it completes.

Important Note Regarding Windows 7: The old Visual BASIC modules that Yardi is built on does not appear to like running on Windows 7. The application mostly works, but it does NOT work properly in the "search" dialog boxes. If you rely on this feature, then you should NOT go to Windows 7. If you must use Windows 7, you should leverage the Windows XP Mode feature included with Windows 7 Professional. Alternatively, you can purchase and install a current version of VMware Workstation and create your own virtual Windows XP machine to run with Yardi. UPDATE: A user (Dwayne) reported that he was able to get Search to work by disabling UAC on Windows 7. Thanks to Dwayne for this update!

Important Note Regarding 64-bit Operating Systems: Yardi is a 16-bit application. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY that it will ever run directly on a 64-bit version of Windows. (A multi-user environment CAN house the data on a 64-bit server, but Yardi will NOT run there.) There is no workaround for this. If you have purchased a computer with a 64-bit version of Windows, then you will either need to downgrade the OS to a 32-bit version (non-trivial) or run the application in a virtual machine using a 32-bit Windows XP (such as the Windows XP Mode provided with Windows 7 or VMware Workstation).

Important Note Regarding General Protection Fault in W1MIF183.DLL: In certain situations, you may receive this error. Some people have been able to remove W3DBSMGR.EXE and W3CACHE.DLL from the client and bypass this error. Others have had to manually edit the YARDI.INI file and change the data location from a network drive letter to a full UNC path.

Need more help? If you run into an application problem and Yardi is not able or willing to help you, then there is still hope. Contact Robert Fenney of FenTek Systems, Inc. for more help. He can be reached by phone at 818-752-1730, and has great knowledge of working around issues in Yardi. Alternatively, you can try Eng Flanders Group.

Want to use Windows 7 or 10? George DuPre of DuPre Information Services may be able to help as well. George has successfully set up Yardi Pro versions 3.1.05 through 3.2.08 using Windows 7 or Windows 10 host operating system with Oracle virtual machine running Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3 and Yardi Pro version application software with up to 5 concurrent users with PSQL11 client using 16-bit client patch and with Yardi Pro database folder on Windows Server 64-bit 2008 R2, Windows 64-bit 2012 R2 running PSQL11 WGE with patch for version PSQL 11.31. He says that this implementation environment is very stable and protects the Yardi client s investment in Yardi Pro application, and he has successfully implemented this solution to keep clients running through July 2020. George is also very familiar with Yardi Pro databases data structures, etc. for data recovery. You can reach George through his web site, or via phone at 864-295-4727.

If you are a software vendor and would like to add, remove, or modify your information on these pages, we'll be happy to oblige. Simply contact us directly!