Cannot run Celestia Educational

[OldnSlow]

Can anyone help? I have downloaded Celestia original which seems to work ok. I downloaded the educational version in order to complete the activities. I installed it to my D: drive as I keep all my programs on that drive. I had to change all the shortcuts for the activities documents, which wasn't such a big deal. The program ran the first time until I clicked on the second link in the document. I was sent off into space at a tangent. I closed it all down and re-booted. All the hyperlinks stopped working at this point so I un-installed it and did a complete re-install to C: drive. The program will not run at all now from the hyperlinks but seems to run ok without trying the activities. I try to restart the program from the correct hyperlink as indicated in the activity text.
I have a high end gaming PC so system specs should not be an issue. All drivers are up to date. Any ideas anyone?

[John Van Vliet]

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[OldnSlow]

Hi John,

I found that I can start the activity using the shortcut in the Activity_cels folder and the program seems to run ok now. The only thing that I don't have now is sound, but I will persevere with that.

For the record, I am running XP Home SP3 with all updates from Microsoft and Nvidia installed.

[BobHegwood]

Don't know what it's worth here, but in order for me to get sound
using Celestia 1.6.0 (latest SVN) on my Windows Vista Premium box,
I had to perform some strange rituals.

First, I had to uninstall both Quicktime and RealVideo.
Next, I had to copy the MSVCRT.dll from my Windows directory over to the main Celestia directory.
Finally, I had to use the alternative installation ALSETUP.exe file in order to install the appropriate dll
so that it would work on my strange Vista machine. Was worth the effort though.

Again, I don't know if this helps or not, but that's what I had to do on this machine.
Thanks, Bob

[John Van Vliet]

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[OldnSlow]

Thanks guys but after searching the documentation I moved the additional openal32.dll file to the main folder and the sound now works.

Thanks for your replies.

[BobHegwood]

Thanks guys but after searching the documentation I moved the additional openal32.dll file to the main folder and the sound now works.

Thanks for your replies.

Good Deal
That presentation is well worth the effort it takes to get the sound working.

EDIT:
By the way, I had so much trouble getting my sound to work primarily because
"DirectSound hardware acceleration no longer exists on Vista (resulting in potentially broken support for 5.1/7.1 speakers.)"
First, I had to redirect my RealTek Digital Output to the speakers, and then I had to pick a configuration
which allowed me to use my audio speakers.

Great Fun!

[fsgregs]

OldnSlow:

I found that I can start the activity using the shortcut in the Activity_cels folder and the program seems to run ok now

There are two possible reasons why the educational activities will not start from the hyperlink embedded in the image inside an Activity document, but will start by clicking the Activity_cels shortcut in that folder.

1. Right-click on the image on page 4 or so of an Activity document that is supposed to launch an Activity, and "edit the hyperlink". That hyperlink MUST point to the following:

C:/Program Files/Celestia151-ED/Activity_cels/Activity___.lnk, where the underline is the number of the Activity. It may be that the hyperlink is a bit lost. See if editing the link works. If not ...

2. MS Word has a bug in it regarding these hyperlinks. I first discovered it when I loaded a computer game on my system, and all the links to the Activity_cels folder in the Activities stopped working. I uninstalled that game, and they still did not work. I had to restore the computer to the day before I loaded the game. Then, the links all worked again. I contacted Microsoft, but they were no help (as usual). It appears something in the gaming software can affect how MS Word reads hyperlinks to shortcut files

I have not found a way to fix it, short of using the direct shortcut inside the Activity_cels folder to launch an Activity.

Enjoy the Activities

Frank