Celestia v1.6.0 RC1 – installation problem

[lidocorc]

With Dependencywalker I can't find any missing essential dll. (Starting Guillermo's exe and then RC2 exe, in both cases Dep.walker showed a missing msjava.dll. This defect seemed to not matter. I reinstalled msjava and nothing changed. RC2-exe still complaines about a corrupt installation and Guillermo's exe is ok.)

The best way would be, buying the compiler/debugger environment, celestia is being developed with, running the source code in debug mode and see what really happens at which point of the program. But I simply can't afford the time to do that.

I hope some people else will experience the same issue and peu ? peu the bug will be discovered.

lidocorc

[t00fri]

The best way would be, buying the compiler/debugger environment, celestia is being developed with,

lidocorc

We are NOT using any commercial compilers in Celestia Development. So nothing to buy here... For Windows, we all use MS VC++ 2008 Express, which is free and quite good. For Linux, we use of course the built-in gcc suite.

Quite a number of somewhat experienced users did install one of these suites as well and thus are able to compile all the new development versions from SVN. Since in the past new official Celestia versions were not released too frequently, development versions are certainly interesting...

But nevertheless, we should find out what your problem is, since others might encounter it, too.

Fridger

[t00fri]

Another point:

what happens if you start celestia.exe from within the directory, where it is physically located, i.e. change directory to C:\Programme\Celestia16 and click celestia.exe from there. Any changes?

Looking at your error message, I doubt that you did not make any changes yourself during or after the installation: As the location of Celestia, I would have expected to see the default name C:\Programme\Celestia in your case. What I see, however, on the error message is a different directory name, namely C:\Programme\Celestia16.

If you changed that directory name e.g. by hand after the installation, you would be in trouble, since the registry still uses the name Celestia instead of Celestia16! Only if you chose that modified name from within the proper installation process, it should be fine.

If you used 'depend' correctly and everything was OK, then it rather points to some other problem than a missing DLL.

Let me speculate that you have more than one Celestia version installed and that there was some mixup going on in the registry that prevented the start...

Fridger

[Guckytos]

Just installed RC2 on Win XP SP2 (specs see below).

No problems at all, everything worked from the start. Just to be sure I took a look around on the machine and found the VC8 runtimes only in the Celestia directory. So the installer works for that on my machine.

[lidocorc]

What happens if you start celestia.exe from within the directory, where it is physically located,..

There is no difference between an immediate start and starting by a link file.

If you changed that directory name e.g. by hand after the installation, you would be in trouble, since the registry still uses the name Celestia instead of Celestia16!

I know that and took care of that. To be absolutely sure that all paths concerning celestia are correct I scanned the registry and found them being ok.

Yesterday I came a little closer to a solution. NVIDIA offers driver updates in an all-in-one package, which is containing drivers for all GPUs of the last years. For the newer ones the package is also containing a so called "PhysX" engine. Up to now I refused to install that stuff, because I don't need it, I'm not a gamer. Just to see what happens, I installed PhysX and -- suddenly Celestia 1.6RC2 was working well. Now it's up to me to decide: Do I want my computer being polluted by hundreds of MB of unneccessary software just to take part in the progress of single application? As long as Guillermo will provide us with compilations that are working on my machine I would say: no. Maybe in the next months NVIDIA comes with new driver updates that are working properly without PhysX. I hope so.

Thank you all for your interest in my problem.

lidocorc

[Guckytos]

What happens if you start celestia.exe from within the directory, where it is physically located,..

There is no difference between an immediate start and starting by a link file.

If you changed that directory name e.g. by hand after the installation, you would be in trouble, since the registry still uses the name Celestia instead of Celestia16!

I know that and took care of that. To be absolutely sure that all paths concerning celestia are correct I scanned the registry and found them being ok.

Yesterday I came a little closer to a solution. NVIDIA offers driver updates in an all-in-one package, which is containing drivers for all GPUs of the last years. For the newer ones the package is also containing a so called "PhysX" engine. Up to now I refused to install that stuff, because I don't need it, I'm not a gamer. Just to see what happens, I installed PhysX and -- suddenly Celestia 1.6RC2 was working well. Now it's up to me to decide: Do I want my computer being polluted by hundreds of MB of unneccessary software just to take part in the progress of single application? As long as Guillermo will provide us with compilations that are working on my machine I would say: no. Maybe in the next months NVIDIA comes with new driver updates that are working properly without PhysX. I hope so.

Thank you all for your interest in my problem.

lidocorc

The question may sound a bit dumb, but why don't you go back to an older NVIDIA driver version without the CUDA package? Or is there a real need for you to have the latest driver (some graphics issues or something)?
This could be a workable solution. I also refrained from installing the latest drivers from them since they have that stuff integrated in their standard driver package. I have a pre 8xxx card that won't support it anyways.

Regards,

Guckytos

[lidocorc]

Version 178.33 is supposed to be the oldest version that runs on my GPU, because it's the version that came with my motherboard's CD. This version is definitely not suitable for Celestia RC2. That's why I decided to update graphics drivers to version 185.85. But things were not better after updating. Only installing PhysX in addition, which wasn't part of the motherboard's software package, made Celestia RC2 run well.

Gruss von lidocorc

[t00fri]

What happens if you start celestia.exe from within the directory, where it is physically located,..

There is no difference between an immediate start and starting by a link file.

I was merely trying to remotely catch a possible bug in your installation. Your statement is only true if the link is not broken!

If you changed that directory name e.g. by hand after the installation, you would be in trouble, since the registry still uses the name Celestia instead of Celestia16!

I know that and took care of that. To be absolutely sure that all paths concerning celestia are correct I scanned the registry and found them being ok.

Well, we are unaware how much new users in this community know about the internals of Windows. Most have VERY little idea. Still, I am not yet convinced that your problem did not arise due to some manipulations that you did in your own system.

It is meanwhile apparent that your problem is NOT a missing DLL as I had speculated right away. Moreover, I don't believe it is a driver issue, once you install the appropriate NVIDIA driver (without CUDA) for your card. In this community we have really a lot of experience with all sorts of NVIDIA cards and their drivers...NO problems known!

Before examining the registry entries individually, it would have been MUCH safer and more clearcut, to temporarily deinstall your previous Celestia version. Your personal textures and add-ons would of course NOT be deinstalled in this process (if properly installed). Hence you can just rename by hand the remaining C:\Programme\Celestia directory containing your personal textures and add-ons. Similarly you should completely deinstall your latest Celestia16 via the Windows installer.

Thereafter you do a clean, fresh installation of the new 1.6rc2. version without touching anything in the installation process or thereafter!

I bet the result will simply work...

Fridger

[t00fri]

Version 178.33 is supposed to be the oldest version that runs on my GPU, because it's the version that came with my motherboard's CD. This version is definitely not suitable for Celestia RC2. That's why I decided to update graphics drivers to version 185.85. But things were not better after updating. Only installing PhysX in addition, which wasn't part of the motherboard's software package, made Celestia RC2 run well.

Gruss von lidocorc

You have a 64 bit CPU. What Windows version (64bit?) do you use? (CUDA might still be broken for 64bit Windows).

Moreover, in the info about the new 185.85 driver, it says:

Automatische Installation der neuen PhysX Systemsoftware Version 9.09.0408.

Why did you intall it once more? Or did you chose not to install it initially?

Fridger

[lidocorc]

Dear Fridger,

I bet the result will simply work...

let's bet! I'm not convinced, but I do hope you win! Let's see.

Gruss von Heinrich

[t00fri]

Dear Fridger,

I bet the result will simply work...

let's bet! I'm not convinced, but I do hope you win! Let's see.

Gruss von Heinrich

Hallo Heinrich,

of course under the premise that you have installed a proper NVIDIA driver for your 64bit machine. The latter I would characterize by the driver's proven ability to deliver proper 3D hardware support for your card in case of other OpenGL applications than Celestia.

Gruesse aus HH nach Bayern,
Fridger

[lidocorc]

Hallo Fridger,

I deinstalled celestia completely. To be sure nothing was left from previous installations I carefully surched harddisk and registry. Some class descriptions in HKLM\Software\classes\ were not removed by the deinstallation process, but I guess this doesn't matter. Anyway, I removed them manually.

To keep it short: Reinstallation was not successful. Same error message as before.

To answer one of your previous questions. My Windows is a 32bit version, 5.1, Build 2600

Schade, aber trotzdem vielen Dank.
Gruss von Heinrich

[t00fri]

Hallo Fridger,

I deinstalled celestia completely. To be sure nothing was left from previous installations I carefully surched harddisk and registry. Some class descriptions in HKLM\Software\classes\ were not removed by the deinstallation process, but I guess this doesn't matter. Anyway, I removed them manually.

To keep it short: Reinstallation was not successful. Same error message as before.

To answer one of your previous questions. My Windows is a 32bit version, 5.1, Build 2600

Schade, aber trotzdem vielen Dank.
Gruss von Heinrich

Hallo Heinrich,

natuerlich ist es schade,...

but why should you then encounter any trouble running Celestia? Statistics is really on Celestia's side, as to general OpenGl operation. The only recent issue might have been some missing DLLs for people who don't compile themselves. But I guess we have ruled this out with 'depend'.

Here is another possible issue with the MS redistributable kit that might exist in another incompatible SP release! I can see it on one of my Windows machines that there was an update! Did you uninstall the redistributable completely from your machine, meanwhile? After all Celestia-1.6.0rc2 is supposed to provide the lacking DLLs in the distribution!?

The reason for my suspicion is a quite analogous error reported in the net that turned out to be related to an incompatibility of this type.
Here is the URL:
http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/sh ... hp?t=21478
The solution comes further down... (user 'mant')

What is probably hidden in this, is the lacking MS .Net framework installation! Here is a respective reply I found:
(http://www.blinkensisters.org/wiki/index.php/Install)

If you get an error like CreateProcess failed; code 14001, then you most likely don't have the .Net Framework Version 2.0 installed. Try to download it from here or through Windows Update, install it

++++++++++++++++++++++++
That's what I would try next! Of course people who use the VC++2008 compiler, MUST have at least .Net 2.0 framework installed...
++++++++++++++++++++++++

If you go on searching Google with "CreateProcess failed", code 140001
you will be surprised how many people have this problem. In all cases, Celestia was NOT involved! Hence this points again to a more general issue, like an incompatibility in the VS2008 redistributable.

Good luck & schoene Gruesse,
Fridger

[cartrite]

There is also a .Net 3.something. I'm wondering what version Chris has installed on his machine. Maybe that is causing the problems.
cartrite

[t00fri]

There is also a .Net 3.something. I'm wondering what version Chris has installed on his machine. Maybe that is causing the problems.
cartrite

Yes, but it is at least .Net 2.0 that VS2008Express requires when you install it.
I got .Net 3.0 installed myself, since MS tries in any update to "impose" the latest .Net version ...

Fridger

[lidocorc]

That's what I would try next! Of course people who use the VC++2008 compiler, MUST have at least .Net 2.0 framework installed...

Fridger, in the end you got the solution. Vielen Dank! .Net framework seems to be essential to carry out the code of Celestia. It might be interesting to ask users who got Celestia RC2 running on their Windos XP machine: Do you all have .NET framework installed? (Vista users need not be asked. .NET is already part of their system.) It also might be interesting to hear what happens if someone deinstalled .NET for a moment and tried to start Celestia then.

Gruss von Heinrich

[cartrite]

That's what I would try next! Of course people who use the VC++2008 compiler, MUST have at least .Net 2.0 framework installed...

Fridger, in the end you got the solution. Vielen Dank! .Net framework seems to be essential to carry out the code of Celestia. It might be interesting to ask users who got Celestia RC2 running on their Windos XP machine: Do you all have .NET framework installed? (Vista users need not be asked. .NET is already part of their system.) It also might be interesting to hear what happens if someone deinstalled .NET for a moment and tried to start Celestia then.

Gruss von Heinrich

.Net Framework seems to be a requirement for some other applications too. I think I installed it a while back when I installed the NASA application World Wind. Then it gets updated when I ran Windows Update.
cartrite

[t00fri]

That's what I would try next! Of course people who use the VC++2008 compiler, MUST have at least .Net 2.0 framework installed...

Fridger, in the end you got the solution. Vielen Dank! .Net framework seems to be essential to carry out the code of Celestia. It might be interesting to ask users who got Celestia RC2 running on their Windos XP machine: Do you all have .NET framework installed? (Vista users need not be asked. .NET is already part of their system.) It also might be interesting to hear what happens if someone deinstalled .NET for a moment and tried to start Celestia then.

Gruss von Heinrich

Hallo Heinrich,

das hoert man gern...und dann hat sich's ja auch gelohnt. Ist auch fuer uns sehr wichtig!

Good to know the reason, since it's also important for the Celestia distribution!

Gruesse,
Fridger

[BobHegwood]

.Net Framework seems to be a requirement for some other applications too. I think I installed it a while back when I installed the NASA application World Wind. Then it gets updated when I ran Windows Update.
cartrite

Now you've gotten me curious here.
When I update Windows, I see an optional update provided
for an Nvidia .NET package for my Vista system. When I try
to install it though, it will not install. Why does Nvidia feature a
.NET function?

Thanks, Brain-Dead

[Adirondack]

FYI:
Celestia 1.6.0RCx runs fine on one of my old xp machines with at least .NET 1.1.

Adirondack