FreeScan works just fine.... In fact, it works much better than fine. It's author has invested a great deal of time and energy in creating what amounts to a great public service for the monitoring community.
If you are having a problem with FreeScan, you need to give serious consideration to your own acknowledgement that you are new to working with modern scanners. Exercise patience and take the time to learn.
Today's modern public service radio systems and the associated technology are complicated critters.... and it takes another complicated criiter to decode and receive them. Given the complexity of the hardware you are using; you are not going to become very proficient at using it in a matter of days. Trust me when I say that you will still be learning new things about what this scanner can do and how to make it do it 12 months from now.... or longer.