Celestia will not start

[gkdiamond]

I installed Celestia 1.6.0 without any problems, at least that I saw. When I try to run it I get the the follow error message:

The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail.

I do not know what its side-by-side configuration is referring to and there is no application event log (only the ChangeLog) in the Celestia folder. Can someone please get me headed in the right direction as to what the problem is or might be. I am running Vista SP2 and if it matters Internet Explorer 9 Beta.

Thanks

[selden]

Where did you get the Celestia installation kit?

That error usually (but not always) means that a C++ runtime library is missing. That was a problem with some of the pre-releases, but a lot effort went into making sure they all were included in the final release. There was a recent stink about security issues related to dlls which might (or might not) have resulted in a "critical patch" to do something about it.

You might try downloading Celestia from https://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/files/

Another thing to try would be to install it in a directory other than the default "Program Files". Windows is very protective of programs put in the Program Files directories.

FWIW, I created C:\MyPrograms\ and installed Celestia v1.6.0 there under Win7 and haven't seen any issues with it.

p.s.
One possible fix I found seemed to be saying that some registry issues were preventing some Windows Updates from installing and that that person's side-by-side error went away after "visiting Windows Update".

In other words, you might install a (free) registry cleaner like CCleaner, run its registry cleanup phase at least twice (removing some broken entries often reveals others which were pointing to the first set) then do a Windows Update.

[gkdiamond]

Thanks for the reply. I downloaded it from Softpedia.com, it seems to be the best software download site that I've found.

If a dll is missing that will be hard to track down without knowing which one it is. I'll uninstall Celestia and download and install it from sourceforge and try again, hopefully it was just some kind of a clitch and will run this time. I have a lot of programs installed and haven't really run into a problem with installing in the programs directory other than administrator permissions and needing to elevate the level but if I still have the issue I'll try another directory.

Since I installed Celestia, Windows update has run every day and installed updates. I had also already run CCleaner right after I installed Celestia then rebooted and ran CCleaner again before I even tried to run Celestia.

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[gkdiamond]

John thank you for the input but that can't be true although I've heard something along those lines before. If the updates were not available how could the MS updater find, download and install them. In the last 7 days counting today I have had 5 updates (3 Windows Defender), six the week before that and eight the week before that (again some of these updates are Defender definitions) spread over several days of each week. They are all legitimate updates from MS.

As to the problem that I posted about, I decided to do some research. Originally I had assummed that it had something to do with the Celestia install, hence my post in this forum. As it turns out, it may or may not. Many people have had the same error installing many different programs. Some can not run several programs once they get the error other can not run anything and some can not even get back into Windows after rebooting.

It has something to do with the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package (as Selden mentioned) but no one really seems to know the reason. Something to do with the application wanting to use a different dll than the one available. This doesn't make sense to me because if that were true why doesn't everyone have this problem, as I said my computer is up to date on software.

The fix seems to be to uninstall the redistributable package and the application (or not - depending!) then reinstall the application and the redistributable package. I have both the 2005 and 2008 packages installed but I think the 2008 package is where the issue may be. When I realized that the error message (in my first post above) was talking about the Application Log in the Windows Event Viewer and not an error log in Celestia I took a look at it and this is what it shows:

Activation context generation failed for "C:\Program Files\Celestia\celestia.exe". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="9.0.21022.8" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.

The version shown in the log [version=9.0.21022.8] is very close to the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package [version 9.0.21022.218] on my computer but not the same. I'm still looking into this and also emailing MS support before I uninstall anything. The fix may be removing the registry entries shown in the error message.

Maybe this will help someone else.

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[BobHegwood]

Activation context generation failed for "C:\Program Files\Celestia\celestia.exe". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="9.0.21022.8" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.

The version shown in the log [version=9.0.21022.8] is very close to the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package [version 9.0.21022.218] on my computer but not the same. I'm still looking into this and also emailing MS support before I uninstall anything. The fix may be removing the registry entries shown in the error message.

Maybe this will help someone else.

Just FYI...
Your celestia.exe program should reside in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Celestia directory if you
are using Vista. Works fine on my system. Celestia will not run in the 64-bit architecture yet.
In other words your installation directory ("C:\Program Files\Celestia\") will not work as far as I know.

Again, just FYI...

Thanks, Brain-Dead

[selden]

Bob,

While it's true that Celestia is a 32bit program, it runs fine on a 64 bit architecture. I'm running v1.6.0 under Windows 7 Professional x64. Compiling from svn with the 64 bit version of the VS 2008 C++ Express compiler works, too. The resulting program runs with no problems under Windows XP Professional x86 (i.e. under the 32 bit version of Windows XP). In other words, the compiler settings provided in the svn archive do the right things to build a 32 bit version of Celestia under both architectures. Chris has had a Core i7 system for quite a while, so I guess that's not surprising

My personal experience has been that installing Celestia in a directory other than "Program Files (x86)" avoids all the UAC and other problems that you've described in the past.

[BobHegwood]

My personal experience has been that installing Celestia in a directory other than "Program Files (x86)" avoids all the UAC and other problems that you've described in the past.

Okay Selden...
I did not know that. It's just that every program I have gotten for this Vista
system seems only to work in the x86 setup. I have programs which were
designed specifically for the 64-bit side, and they do work fine.

So, thanks very much for the information will try the 64-bit side again.

Take care, (as usual) Brain-Dead