Celestia will not launch

sgtsquarepants · Post #1by **sgtsquarepants** » 12.08.2007, 03:43

I've downloaded Celestia several times. Each time I try to open the application, the program crashes. I get the "windows has encountered a problem and needs to close" error. Each time it would fail, I'd restart my PC to see if that fixed it and it didn't. I'd uninstall the program and download it again, but each time I'd get the same error. I've deleted all my temporary internet files etc but still get the same error. Please help.

LordFerret · Post #2by **LordFerret** » 12.08.2007, 04:44

Which version of Celestia did you download, v1.4.1? What operating system are you using, WinXP?

The more information you supply, the better people are able to help you. :wink:

sgtsquarepants · Post #3by **sgtsquarepants** » 16.08.2007, 02:00

Thanks for the info LordFerret, I've been downloading Celestia version 1.4.1. I'm also using window's XP Professional. I've been trying to download this on my laptop which is a Toshiba Satellite 1800-S274 Pentium III with 512 of RAM. Any further help is greatly appreciated.

Fenerit · Post #4by **Fenerit** » 16.08.2007, 11:17

Be sure that your graphic card drivers to be up to date, that is, your graphic drivers enabling the video accelerator. If you don't see specific graphic card tabpanel in Control Panel -> Screen (or in systray), try to download the appropriate video drivers for your card. Default Xp video driver are too generic for Celestia's purposes.

Post #5by **selden** » 16.08.2007, 11:31

sgtsquarepants,

Your description is consistent with obsolete, buggy graphics drivers.

You can verify this by completly disabling hardware acceleration. This will cause Celestia to use Microsoft's software OpenGL library, which is slow and has limited functionality, but shouldn't crash.

You can use this procedure to disble hardware acceleration:

Under Windows, open the "Start/Control Panel/Display Properties" window. Select the "Settings/Advanced/Troubleshoot" tab. (not the "Troubleshoot..." button). Move the "Hardware acceleration" slider all the way to the left. Click on the "OK" buttons to change the settings in use. This will cause Windows to use Microsoft's Generic OpenGL v1.1 library, which is limited and can't show all of Celestia's eye candy, but seems to have relatively few bugs. It even works on 2D displays, but it draws everything using software and so is quite slow.

P.S. This is described in the Preliminary Users FAQ, which is available in the "Sticky" posting near the top of the Users Forum