Blue Iris 4 to 5 Migration Guide

bp2008

bp2008

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Blue Iris 5 was released on May 31, 2019.

This is a guide for how to upgrade from Blue Iris 4 to Blue Iris 5. When following this procedure, your existing Blue Iris 4 license key will be upgraded to a Blue Iris 5 license and you will not receive a new Blue Iris 5 license key.

Step 0) Consider Waiting

Many people have been experiencing many bugs with the Blue Iris 5 upgrade. If you don't like pain and suffering, you should consider staying on BI 4 for a few more weeks.

Step 1) Support License

Check in Blue Iris Options > About to see if you are eligible for Blue Iris 5. If not, you will need to purchase and apply an extended support license for $29.95 USD or a priority support license for $59.95.

Once Blue Iris 4 shows that you are eligible for Blue Iris 5, you can proceed to step 2.

Step 2) Back up your Configuration

This is required because you'll probably lose your configuration when uninstalling Blue Iris 4. Back up your Blue Iris settings via the Export settings button in Blue Iris Options > About and move the exported settings file to a safe location, just in case something horrible happens.

Step 3) Unconfigure Service Mode

If you normally run Blue Iris as a service, you will need to open Blue Iris 4 and turn off that feature temporarily. It is in Blue Iris Options > Startup.

Step 4) Install Blue Iris 5

Download and install Blue Iris Version 5 Full Install from here: Download Blue Iris

At the end of the installation, you will be asked to reboot the PC. I doubt this is really necessary, but go ahead and do it just to be safe.

Step 5) Run Blue Iris 5

Run Blue Iris 5. If it runs, then you are one of the lucky ones, and you can move on to Step 6 now.

Update: The Blue Iris 5 installer should fix this automatically.

If it fails with an error message about a dll file, you will need to install a Visual C++ Redistributable which the installer failed to do for you. This might have already been extracted to your Blue Iris 5 folder. It will be named vcredist_x64.exe or vcredist_x86.exe. If it is there, run it and go through that installation procedure. If it is not there, don't worry because you can download it from Microsoft, here: Under the section "Visual Studio 2015, 2017, and 2019", download and install the x64 version for 64-bit Blue Iris, or the x86 version for 32-bit Blue Iris.



Step 6) Uninstall Blue Iris 4

After Blue Iris 5 is running correctly, you can uninstall Blue Iris 4 just like you would uninstall any other program. When it asks if you want to delete registry entries and activation, click no. Your registry entries will probably be lost anyway. That is why we made a backup. If Blue Iris 5 has suddenly lost activation, restore your backup.

Step 7) Configure Service Mode

Optional. After Blue Iris 4 is uninstalled, it is safe to re-enable service mode.

In Blue Iris 5, the options menu has moved slightly. Access it by clicking this menu button, then Settings.

4mrr3uU.png


Step 8) Fix Web Server

Update: The Blue Iris 5 installer should fix this automatically.

The web server will be broken after the upgrade, but it is easy to fix. Go to Blue Iris Settings > Web server and change the "Root" folder path to point at your Blue Iris 5/www folder.

Related: See Bug 1 below.

-------------------------
TROUBLESHOOTING
-------------------------

A few bugs have been occurring when updating. If your problem is not listed here or the recommended solution does not work for you, go ahead and post in this thread!

Bug 1) Web Interface fails to load

Assuming you have correctly performed Step 8 (Fix Web Server), you may still find yourself unable to load the login page or UI3 due to the browser giving you an error message. For some unknown reason, Blue Iris 5's installer is failing to properly install UI3 sometimes. Some users have reported that UI3 gets installed correctly if you run the BI5 installer again (to do a "repair" install). Others said they needed to install UI3 manually. You can get it from here: bp2008/ui3

Bug 2) Blue Iris does not appear on the screen after running it.

Some people have reported that Blue Iris 5 started fine one time and then failed to appear on screen again after closing and reopening. If this happens to you, you will need to do some simple Windows Registry modification.

Open Windows's Registry Editor (Start Menu > Search for "regedit"), and in the text box along the top, paste this and push enter:
Code: 
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perspective Software\Blue Iris\WindowMetrics

This will load the spot in the registry where Blue Iris stores its window position. Likely yours got corrupted somehow, so you may see some wild values for "Left", "Top", "Width", and "Height". You could try editing these manually, but it is easier to just 1) Kill the blueiris.exe process. 2) Delete the WindowMetrics folder entirely in the registry editor. 3) Run Blue Iris 5 again.


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I'm getting an error "A problem caused the program to stop working correctly....."

At the first restart after install, BI5 worked and loaded right away, however after I uninstall BI4 and restarted, this message popped up.

It won't start at all.... tried uninstall / reinstall same result
 

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hmm I seem to be back up and running except web server, I reconfigured the address to be Blue Iris 5\www, iPhone app works fine, but web interface gives me this error.

An unexpected error has occurred in Blue Iris Login (v 19 / 5.0.0.42). If you wish to report the error, please SCREENSHOT the browser now.

ReferenceError: $ is not defined
at http://censored_hostname/login.htm?page=/ [149:3]
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0​
 
fd3 said:
hmm I seem to be back up and running except web server, I reconfigured the address to be Blue Iris 5\www, iPhone app works fine, but web interface gives me this error.

An unexpected error has occurred in Blue Iris Login (v 19 / 5.0.0.42). If you wish to report the error, please SCREENSHOT the browser now.

ReferenceError: $ is not defined
at http://censored_hostname/login.htm?page=/ [149:3]
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0​
Click to expand...

After correcting the www path I had the same error. Stopped BI and the service. Re-ran the installer and told it to repair. Started the service and the GUI. Web site is now working.
 
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Zanthexter said:
After correcting the www path I had the same error. Stopped BI and the service. Re-ran the installer and told it to repair. Started the service and the GUI. Web site is now working.
Click to expand...
Thanks, killed the service, re-ran installer, clicked repair and its back online!! Thanks.
May wait a week before I migrate my other two computers.
 
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Just an FYI for folks, seems to be some sort of limit to how many cameras can use NVidia decoding at once. After 37 cameras, none would connect. I started switching some of the connected cameras to Intel, and for each one I switched, one of the ones that wouldn't connect (that was set to Nvidia) would connect after a few seconds.

Similar thing on another system, but as that one only had 21 cameras, I was able to just flip it 100% to Intel for now.

Now we'll see if things get unstable. Intel :/
 
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Zanthexter said:
After correcting the www path I had the same error. Stopped BI and the service. Re-ran the installer and told it to repair. Started the service and the GUI. Web site is now working.
Click to expand...

Same situation here. Repairing via the installer fixed the UI3/web issue. Other than that, this tutorial was perfect, thanks!
 
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fd3 said:
Thanks, killed the service, re-ran installer, clicked repair and its back online!! Thanks.
May wait a week before I migrate my other two computers.
Click to expand...
I can confirm this worked on two separate installs.
On a side note: bl5 does seem more efficient. Computer running with less cpu
Thanks for the fix!
 
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Thanks bp2008!

I just did my upgrade and that went fine with one exception. I had the Win10 anti-exploit features set to enforce Mandatory ASLR as a system policy, which was an issue for BI4 and is still an issue for BI5. I went to the Exploit Protection panel, switched to Program Settings, and made an exemption for BI5 as shown in the attached screenshot.

The symptom would be if BI simply won't launch.
 

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I'm getting hung up on entering the license key. It pauses for about 45 seconds then tell me it can't register online:

upload_2019-6-1_13-3-12.png

When I paste that string into my browser, I get this:

upload_2019-6-1_13-4-3.png

Is his server just overloaded, or am I missing a step?
 
Good post. I was going to make a post about the web server. One thing, don't change the web server folder from 4 to 5. I get an error if I do so on my client machines. Keeping it at 4 allows it to work as normal. A fresh install might prevent this this issue, but I haven't tried that.

Also, after uninstalling 4, run the 5 installer again in repair mode. This will correct the web server issue that many are having.
 
I had the same issue, were UI3 was not installed initially, a repair didnt resolve I have to completely uninstall and reinstall.
 
I hosed my BI4 and BI5. Neither will open now. I don't want to clutter this thread with my experience, but at this point I'm stranded with out a clear way to even get back to where I was. My new thread is here.

Edited to add: SOLVED! After uninstalling both V4 and V5 completely, I went to the registry and deleted everything with either blueiris or perspective in the key. As @SkyLake pointed out, one registry key won't allow you to delete it until you manually add 'full control' to the administrator account (right click on the key, permissions, check full control for admin). Once all keys were gone, I rebooted, then reinstalled V4. I entered my key, and came up with a blank slate. I then imported the backup made just before attempting the v5 and ALL IS WELL!!! WHEW thank you for suggesting the registry scrubbing.
 
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I'm not getting past the .dll issue even with doing the above instructions. "The code execution cannot proceed because mfc140u.dll was not found.."
 
I followed instructions exactly. Both BI4 and BI5 got hosed. I followed the advice of cleaning registries and got it back working. As soon as I uninstall BI4. It loses activation and re-activating is not possible. Any ideas?
 
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