Google Earth no longer works

I've been using Google Earth on XP for years without issue. About 2 weeks ago it stopped working on my pc and two other laptops also using the same set up on each The message appears when I launch it;

'Google Earth can't connect to the imagery server to download new images'

I have disabled my firewall to allow all traffic (Private Firewall 7.0) and Avast antivirus, all shields, to no effect. I'm using version 7.0.1.8244 of Earth. I uninstalled it, reinstalled and tried different versions also with no effect.

I tried one of my laptops on a different router at my work. It's the same ISP, but I had the same issue.

Apparently, the Earth server is kh.google.com. I get a 404 error message when I go to that page. I also pinged it from another website and it says it's not functioning.

Any ideas appreciated. Thanks. Mark

 

I think you'll find that Google have 'switched off' the servers for this version, in line with their 'sunsetting' policy. We had to update to newer versions in Puppy Linux a little while back for the same reason.

Google Earth is a little bit different to most applications. It has two components; the user desktop 'client', and the matching server-side component.....and the two have to work together (and these always have to be matching versions, too).

Google's ultimate aim is to have everybody using the new Google Earth Web browser 'app'.....and it will ONLY work in Chrome, too (or a Chromium-derived 'clone'). The best of these is probably SRWare's 'Iron' browser; whatever you use, it must support WebRTC and make use of hardware acceleration derived from a discrete graphics card. And unfortunately, only recent releases support all this stuff.....and I'm pretty certain XP is no longer supported.

Sad, but true, I'm afraid. It also needs pretty powerful hardware, as well; my own, quad-core Pentium 'Gold' G5400, running at nearly 4 GHz, with all 'mod cons', struggles with it.....and that's with 32 GB of DDR4. The only folks I know who get anything like a decent experience with it are running 8- or 16-core i7s/i9s, with powerful Nvidia RTX 2xxx-series GPUs. A Core2Duo will NOT 'cut the mustard' with this thing; its hardware/processing requirements are, quite frankly, bloody ridiculous.

You'll ALSO need a pretty good, high-speed broadband connection for it to do anything more than appear 'sluggish'..!


Mike.

 

https://beebom.com/google-earth-alternatives/

https://www.topbestalternatives.com/google-earth/

https://alternativeto.net/software/google-earth/

you might try any of the programs from the links above, I have never used google earth so I have no comparison.

 

Thank you Mike and Elizabeth for your replies. Much appreciated for your time.

I found this after spending most of yesterday on a solution. There's not much else to do this time of year!

https://support.google.com/earth/thread/43329999?hl=en

It confirms the end of support for older versions.

I managed to get Earth working, minus Street View. This is what I did;

Uninstalled the old version I was attempting to get working

Deleted the old registry folders remaining

(Backup your registry first if you are unsure about messing anything up)
Went into Regedit (Start, Run, type 'regedit', return - for the uninitiated)

Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Software
Google
GECommonSettings - deleted this folder
Google Earth - deleted this folder

Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE
Google
Google Earth - deleted this folder
Exit

I then installed Google Earth Pro 7.1.8.3036 from here

http://www.pcds.fi/downloads/applic...leearth/installer/rel718/googleearth.718.html

It installs without issue and connects to the server, unlike the older versions. As mentioned above, it works, sluggishly, considering my ageing graphics card etc. A pop up appeared saying the card is not compatible. This is possibly why Street View does not function.

I also installed Earth as well as Earth Pro. Both function without Street View. I'm using Mypal browser by the way.
I'm happy enough

Mark

 

great , but if you have a spare pc, why not try the others and you might like one better than google earth,

 

ANY app or web browser that struggles on a rig with such high specs points to horribly written code and QA. Google Earth has always been nothing more than a novelty that has has ALWAYS ran poorly despite your system configuration. Clearly it has low priority on Google's development radar.

This also means that WASM is not ready for prime time.

 

Marble looked promising, but failed to install properly.

Zoom Earth is a good web-based Earth alternative and works well.

https://zoom.earth/

Thanks Mike, to your thread on Serpent

https://www.xpforums.com/threads/serpent-web-browser.933889/
I'm now using Serpent for my main browser and used the latest User Agent string for Firefox

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:84.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/84.0

I can now get the videos to play on the BBC News site that were otherwise blocked as their iPlayer only works with the latest specified browsers and OS.

Thanks again

Mark

 

TBH, if you still want 'StreetView' from within a web-app, you could do a lot worse than Google's own 'Maps'. It's improved a lot from a few years ago, and now has Satellite View, with the addition of 'StreetView' (if you want it) by simply dragging the little 'man' across to the appropriate 'blue line' on whichever road you want to explore. Works for me, anyway.

I've further set this up in 'Puppy' Linux (which I run as my daily-driver nowadays, though I always had a soft spot for XP, which is why I still hang out here) as a 'web-app' in Chrome, meaning it'll open up in its own window. This then means I've been able to set up a Menu entry for the Maps web-app in such a way that it'll fire-up by itself without opening the browser (if I want it to).

Chrome IS pretty configurable.....and you can perform a lot of tricks with it when you know how. (I'm something of a Chrome 'veteran', having used it ever since the 'beta' test builds in the late summer/early autumn of 2008, prior to the release of v001 in October of that year. It's getting so I'm starting to finally know my way around it, you could say!)


Mike.