How to revert from iMatch 2020 to iMatch 2019 (no AVX support on my PC's)

[halftone]

I'm making a new post as I suspect this may be a bit of a FAQ for impoverished pro users.

I don't visit the forums often and knew nothing about this AVX stuff. Neither of my PC's support AVX, as I've now found out. (The main one is a Dual-Core E3800 3.3GHz, the laptop is a Dell Precision M4500 with i7 first gen - both date from ~2010).

So how do I revert to 2019 on the one I 'upgraded' and discovered iMatch no longer works? If I run the 2020 .msi it offers to repair or 'remove' iMatch. That sounds like full removal, not a way back to iMatch2019.

I'm sorry but I am rather undelighted off by this. I've been using iMatch since 2004 and did not expect this sort of antisocial behaviour. Because it's critically important the installer should have (a)put up a big red warning or (b)forced a restore point to be created, or give some way to revert. I also would have appreciated the upgrade email and upgrade wizard mentioning this elephant trap. I have backup images, of course, but I would have preferred to avoid wasting several hours.

[Mario]

Please don't cross post. You've made a post about this in another thread already and I replied.
Here is my reply again:

Well, um. I don't visit the forums often and knew nothing about this AVX stuff. Neither of my PC's support AVX, as I've now found out
(...)
I'm sorry but I am rather pissed off by this.
(...)
...2004 and did not expect this sort of antisocial behaviour.

The requirement for AVX is not only discussed in this community (for a long time).

It is also explicitly mentioned in these places:

1. download page (https://www.photools.com/download/)
2. in the hardware & software requirements (https://www.photools.com/hardware-software-requirements/)
3. on the IMatch 2020 - What's New page: https://www.photools.com/imatch-2020-whats-new/
4. on the Upgrading to IMatch 2020 page: https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/#migrate_imatch2020.htm
5. in the big blue "Your upgrade voucher" box you see when you enter the customer portal. I'm sure you have seen this, otherwise you would have no upgrade.

If you have really overlooked all that, I don't know how else I could communicate this minimum requirement to you.
What did you read before upgrading your license to IMatch 2020? Where should I have put the info so you would have known?

I don't find it anti-social of to upgrade the minimum hardware and software requirements for a software every couple of years.

To roll back to IMatch 2019, uninstall IMatch 2020.
Re-install IMatch 2019.
Restore your database and settings from the backup you have made, as per upgrade instructions.

mportant the installer should have (a)put up a big red warning or (b)forced a restore point to be created, or give some way to revert.

Restore points are no good by massive upgrades of software. And they only grab parts of the installation. Microsoft is not encouraging restore points themselves anymore.

Did you at least read the IMPORTANT install instructions? Like, how to make a backup copy of your database? Your preferences? Your IMatch installation...?
Then just uninstall IMatch 2020, re-install 2019 (download from customer portal), restore your database and IMatch settings (from your normal backup or pack & go) and you're back to IMatch 2019.
If your computer really has no AVX (what kind of computer is that?) you would have no fun with IMatch 2020 anyway. Without AVX all vector and matrix math operations are 10 to 100 times slower.

[halftone]

Sorry about the cross post. Please remove the duplicate in the other thread, which is probably too buried to be useful to anyone else with the same problem.

It wasn't difficult to revert. I uninstalled 2020 and reinstalled 2019, and everything was back without having to revert to Pack and Go or other backups. It appears that lack of AVX support stopped 2020 dead when I tried to run it, before any alteration to the DB, or anything else, occurred. DB checked and clean. Panic over.

[Mario]

It appears that lack of AVX support stopped 2020 dead when I tried to run

Yes. Software which requires AVX (or any other modern processor feature, AVX is old) will crash immediately when the processor cannot handle it.