Frequently Asked Questions
Got a question? Hopefully it's anwered here. If not, search our userforum or contact us directly.
Installation
- What are the minimum system requirements?
- Does Geneious work on Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard?
- Does Geneious work on Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5?
- How do I upgrade Geneious Pro/Basic?
- Will I lose all my data if I upgrade Geneious Pro/Basic?
- How do I store my data on a network or USB drive?
- Do you have a Windows installer (.msi) package for Geneious?
Licensing
- I want to use Geneious Basic for free for academic purposes, what do I need to do?
- I have two computers, do I have to buy two licenses for Geneious Pro?
- If my Geneious Pro license expires will I lose any data?
General
Troubleshooting
- Geneious crashed or behaved strangely, what should i do?
- When I search online databases I get an error saying "Please check your connection settings"
- Geneious often says it is running out of memory
Installation
- What are the minimum system requirements?
This depends greatly on the type of work you will be using Geneious for, but we recommend at least the following:
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000, MacOS X 10.4, Linux kernel 2.6, Solaris 10 or higher.
Processor: Pentium 4, PowerPC G4 or faster
Memory: 1024MB or more
Hard-disk: 500MB or more of free space
Video: 1024x768 resolution or higher- Does Geneious work on Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard?
Yes, Geneious version 4.7.6 and later fully support Snow Leopard.
- Does Geneious work on Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5?
Yes, Geneious runs on both Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
- How do I upgrade Geneious Pro/Basic?
Simply download the newest version of Geneious from our download page and install it to the same location as your existing Geneious Pro/Basic. Your previous data and license will be automatically loaded by the new version.
- Will I lose all my data if I upgrade Geneious Pro/Basic?
No, your data will automatically be transferred to the new version. We do however suggest that you backup all of your data in Geneious just in case. You should use File -> Export -> All Local Documents to do this.
- How do I store my data on a network or USB drive?
You can change where Geneious stores your data by following these steps:
1. Plug in your USB drive or mount your network drive, open the drive and create a new folder to put your Geneious data in ("Geneious Data" for example).
2. Start up Geneious and select Tools -> Preferences from the menu.
3. On the General tab, click Browse next to the Data Storage Location option.
4. Navigate to and select the new folder you created on your drive and click the Select button.
5. Click OK and Geneious will ask you if you want to copy your data across, choose what you would like to do then click OK.You are now storing your data on the drive. To access the data from another computer just change the Data Storage Location on the other computer as described above.
- Do you have a Windows installer (.msi) package for Geneious?
If you would like a Windows installer package please contact support@geneious.com and we can supply you with one.
Licensing
- I want to use Geneious Basic for free for academic purposes, what do I need to do?
Simply download and install Geneious Basic, this will give you a trial period of the Geneious Pro Features. Once the Pro trial has expired you may continue to use Geneious Basic for free! No further action is required.
- I have two computers, do I have to buy two licenses for Geneious Pro?
With a single user license you can use one license on multiple computers, provided that no one else uses your license and you do not use your license on more than one computer simultaneously. For example, you may have a computer at work and a computer at home or a Mac and a PC.
- If my Geneious Pro license expires will I lose any data?
No, all of your data will still be available in Geneious Basic and if you renew your license then your data will available again in Geneious Pro. Your data may however seem to change in Geneious Basic because there are fewer viewing options etc, but these will return if your license is renewed.
General
- How do I cite Geneious in a paper?
For Geneious 3.0 and above:
Drummond AJ, Ashton B, Buxton S, Cheung M, Cooper A, Heled J, Kearse M, Moir R, Stones-Havas S, Sturrock S, Thierer T, Wilson A (2010) Geneious v5.1, Available from http://www.geneious.com
If you use the primer design feature in Geneious we request that you cite Primer3 as:
Steve Rozen and Helen J. Skaletsky (2000) Primer3 on the WWW for general users and for biologist programmers. In: Krawetz S, Misener S (eds) Bioinformatics Methods and Protocols: Methods in Molecular Biology. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, pp 365-386
Source code available at http://primer3.sourceforge.net/- Does Geneious comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act?
Please read our Section 508 compliance page for full details on our compliance.
Troubleshooting
- Geneious crashed or behaved strangely, what should i do?
If Geneious offers to send an error report to us, please provide as much detail as possible and click Send. Take note of the incident number if you wish to check with us on the status of the problem.
If not, contact support@geneious.com or post a message in the Geneious Bugs section of our user forum.
Please include any details that may be relevant and your crash.log file if there is one. If the crash involved importing of a file it would be very helpful if you send us the file as well.
You can find the crash.log file here:
Windows: C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Geneious X.Y Data
Mac OS: /Users/[User Name]/Geneious X.Y Data
Linux: Home Directory/.Geneious X.Y Data- When I search online databases I get an error saying "Please check your connection settings"
This will occur if you dont have a connection to the internet or if you are behind a proxy server.
If Geneious is not able to detect your proxy settings automatically (by default), they must be set manually. To do this, open your default browser (eg. Internet Explorer or Safari) and go to the connection settings.
In Internet Explorer these are under Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> Lan Settings...
In Safari, Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies (Change Settings...)
In Firefox, Tools -> Options -> Connection Settings
If a proxy server or an automatic configuration script are specified here then they must be put into the Geneious
preferences also. To do this, select preferences in the Tools menu or click the preferences button at the top of the Geneious window. Set the proxy settings under the general tab to those from your browser.- Geneious often says it is running out of memory
If your computer has 1GB of RAM or more, you can allow Geneious to use more by following these steps:
- Select Tools -> Preferences from the menu in Geneious.
- Select the General tab
- Increase the value of Max memory available to Geneious (to 1000 MB for example).
- Finally, restart Geneious and you shouldn't get these warnings as often.