Celestia won't start under XP

[Press2MECO]

I'm having problems getting Celestia to run on my computer.
It installs fine, however, pretty much before it even gets a chance to start, I recieve an error message saying there was an error and celestia has to be closed. Am trying to run the latest version, Celestia v1.2.5pre4. Tried a few other previous versions with the same result.
My computer is running WinXP and has an Nvidia Ti4200.

Had celestia working fine on another computer running WinME, but have since upgraded and now can't get the program to run. Pretty disappointed, because I was really looking forward to seeing how the program looked on this new system.

Any ideas?
Thanks

[Don. Edwards]

I assure you it does work beautifully under WinXP. I too have a Ti4200. In your post you didn't tell us what driver version you are using. If you haven't done it yet go to NVidia's website and download the newest drivers and install them. I personally use the new Detonator40 drivers.
Another thing thing you failed to tell us is if you can run any other OpenGL programs like games. Have you tried running Quake 2 or 3. These are pure OpenGL games and if they are working then drivers arn't your problem. If after installing the drivers you are still having crashes it is posible that one of the Celestia files could be corrupting. If you have a previuos install on another hard drive try copying that to your system and running that. Celestia doesn't have to be installed per-sea from the EXE file. If you have a working copy under Win9x or ME it will work under XP as well. Also make shure you are not running it in compatability mode. Do this by right clicking the main Celestia icon in your Celestia folder. You will see a tab named Compatibility. Make sure it is not set to run in compatibility mode by making sure the check box is not checked. If it is uncheck and apply.
If all this doesn't get you up and running then there might be another issue here and it very well could be in your install of XP. From time to time an install can go bad and you may not even know anything happened. The system will boot and everything will work for the most part but little things here and there will crop up. Like programs that should run but won't. One way around this is to do what is called a dirty install. This means put your XP cd in and start an upgrade install. This install will set the system back to day one except for the programs that you installed will not need to be reinstalled. Some drivers will have to be reinstalled but if there were any critical system files that got damaged this will fix them. Also if you installed any service paks you will need to reinstall those as well. Another thing to consider is to format your drive durring the install proceess to the NTFS file system. This file system is much better at keeping track and fixing damaged system files than the FAT32 file system. With FAT32 any power outage or system crash could loose you a great deal of information on your drive. NTFS is able to restore most of the damaged files to there previous condition. One drawback to NTFS is you can no longer dualboot into Win9x if was on your system along side Xp and the other is that you can't access any drives formated in NTFS with a DOS bootable floppy. You will need to weigh these options before you deside whitch to use. These are just a few things to think of. I have never run Celestia on anything but WinXP so I have no idea how it works under the Win9x environment but it should run just as you remember. If you still can't get it to work than I would consider having your system checked or at least having your Ti4200 checked to make sure it is working 100%. I have learned from experiance and from my line of work that small hardware problems can create a great deal of trouble as well. Good luck.

[UncleSpam]

Make sure that there are no other Celestia .exe files lingering on your HDD. That will cause a similar behaviour.

Good Luck,

Bogdan

[chris]

I'm having problems getting Celestia to run on my computer.
It installs fine, however, pretty much before it even gets a chance to start, I recieve an error message saying there was an error and celestia has to be closed. Am trying to run the latest version, Celestia v1.2.5pre4. Tried a few other previous versions with the same result.
My computer is running WinXP and has an Nvidia Ti4200.

Had celestia working fine on another computer running WinME, but have since upgraded and now can't get the program to run. Pretty disappointed, because I was really looking forward to seeing how the program looked on this new system.

Any ideas?
Thanks

Go to http://www.nvidia.com and download the latest drivers for WinXP. This will almost certainly solve the problem. WinXP doesn't have a decent OpenGL driver in the box--it uses either software or a Direct3D wrapper, neither of which Celestia likes.

--Chris

[Rassilon]

Personally I dont know why peeps insist on using MS Fisher Price

[Guest]

All right, I recently downloaded the most recent drivers for my graphics card, Nvidia Ti4200, yet I still can't get celestia to run. Same problems as before. Downloaded and installed the most recent version as well...still crashes immediatly on start-up.
Any other possible fixes?

[selden]

Strange.
A very similar configuration works fine for me (256MB 500MHz P3, WinXP Pro SP1; Celestia 1.2.5pre7; Nvidia GF4 Ti4200, Detonator 40.72)

1.2.5 does have problems on systems running the OpenGL v1.1 library included in XP. Try running1.2.4 (which does work with that version.)Open the Help menu and cut-and-paste the OpenGL driver information so some one here can look at it.

[Buzz]

After upgrading to the newest Detonator 40.something Celestia crashes on startup with me too, while the older Detonator worked fine...

Win ME, Geforce 2GTS/Pro 32MB

[selden]

Doubly strange. I recently installed the final 40.72 WHQL version for XP and am having no problems at all. This was installed over v30, for what that's worth, not over a beta of v40. I didn't try reverting to VGA mosde first, either, as is usually recommended when changing graphics drivers. for comparison, here are the OpenGL specs as shown by 1.2.5pre7.

Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

Renderer: GeForce4 Ti 4200/AGP/SSE

Version: 1.4.0

Max simultaneous textures: 4

Max texture size: 4096



Supported Extensions:

GL_ARB_depth_texture

GL_ARB_imaging

GL_ARB_multisample

GL_ARB_multitexture

GL_ARB_point_parameters

GL_ARB_shadow

GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp

GL_ARB_texture_compression

GL_ARB_texture_cube_map

GL_ARB_texture_env_add

GL_ARB_texture_env_combine

GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3

GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat

GL_ARB_transpose_matrix

GL_ARB_vertex_program

GL_ARB_window_pos

GL_S3_s3tc

GL_EXT_abgr

GL_EXT_bgra

GL_EXT_blend_color

GL_EXT_blend_minmax

GL_EXT_blend_subtract

GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array

GL_EXT_draw_range_elements

GL_EXT_fog_coord

GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays

GL_EXT_packed_pixels

GL_EXT_paletted_texture

GL_EXT_point_parameters

GL_EXT_rescale_normal

GL_EXT_secondary_color

GL_EXT_separate_specular_color

GL_EXT_shadow_funcs

GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette

GL_EXT_stencil_wrap

GL_EXT_texture3D

GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc

GL_EXT_texture_cube_map

GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp

GL_EXT_texture_env_add

GL_EXT_texture_env_combine

GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3

GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic

GL_EXT_texture_lod

GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias

GL_EXT_texture_object

GL_EXT_vertex_array

GL_EXT_vertex_weighting

GL_HP_occlusion_test

GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat

GL_KTX_buffer_region

GL_NV_blend_square

GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color

GL_NV_depth_clamp

GL_NV_fence

GL_NV_fog_distance

GL_NV_light_max_exponent

GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint

GL_NV_occlusion_query

GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil

GL_NV_pixel_data_range

GL_NV_point_sprite

GL_NV_register_combiners

GL_NV_register_combiners2

GL_NV_texgen_reflection

GL_NV_texture_compression_vtc

GL_NV_texture_env_combine4

GL_NV_texture_rectangle

GL_NV_texture_shader

GL_NV_texture_shader2

GL_NV_texture_shader3

GL_NV_vertex_array_range

GL_NV_vertex_array_range2

GL_NV_vertex_program

GL_NV_vertex_program1_1

GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap

GL_SGIS_multitexture

GL_SGIS_texture_lod

GL_SGIX_depth_texture

GL_SGIX_shadow

GL_WIN_swap_hint

WGL_EXT_swap_control

[Guest]

I'm not at my celestia-pc right now, but I have the 40.72 WHQL version for ME. I disabled virus scanners and de-installed previous detonator versions to make sure everything would go perfectly...

[Buzz]

The previous post was from me, Buzz!

[Don. Edwards]

Well if the new drivers don't work at al then go back to the previous version. There could be a line entry in the registry which is causing the problem. Just because you uninstalled the drivers doesn't mean all registry entries were removed. I'll bet you ten to one thats the problem.
You can use regedit and go through the registry and remove all the nvidia entries by hand but that would take a long time. Since you have Win Me try rolling the system back to a restore point before you installed the detonator 40 drivers. This should at least give you back your original working drivers. But be warned any installs you have done after the the recent driver install will be lost or at minimum be damaged. Another issue is that Windows ME restore program was basically a beta of the one that was built into XP. This means it doesn't always work right and sometimes it won't work at all. I have said in the past that as profesional computer technicial and assembler we never load Windows ME because of its strang bahaviour. Good Luck.

[Guest]

Ok, the good news is that I've been able to get Celestia to finally run. However, it still is not without its flaws with regards to performance.
Once again, up graded to the latest Nvidia drivers (41.09). Not sure if this neccessarily had anything to do with it finally getting to run, as Celestia only appears to run when the slider under display properties ->settings
-> advanced -> troubleshoot is slid to the second to last notch from the left (ie none). From what I can tell, this appears to disable the usage of my graphics card, as the performance appears to be rather slow based on what I expect to have with a P4 2.53 GHz, Win XP, Ti4200 graphics card.
Also the latest version I can get to run under any graphics setting is version 1.2.4.
It appears that I'm having some problem running any OpenGL apps, as I tried to get a few others to run, and they also did not run unless the above mentioned graphics slider is moved most of the way to the left.
Any further ideas?
If anything, least I have it running, if perhaps slightly handicapped.

[selden]

I just realized I haven't seen any mention of what motherboard is being used and what "glue" chipset. If it's a packaged system, who's the vendor and what's the model number?

In the past VIA chipsets have been known to have bugs, for example. I'd be worried about the quality of the motherboard's AGP interface.

[Don. Edwards]

What Selden said is a valid point. If your motherboard chipset is made by VIA then go to the VIA site and download there newest 4 in 1 driver set. This sould help a little with performance. The other thing that was said is that it works with the slider moved to the left. This setting is almost definetly disabling the hardware acceleration of your cards OpenGL drivers. There is a posiblity that when you are installing the drivers Windows isn't alowing the setup program to replace the acctual Opengl32.dll driver file. If this isn't replaced them the drivers will not work properly as the Winows version of this driver is for software rendering only. You may have to manually replace the opengl32.dll driver yourself. If you are using XP you will have to boot into safemode to do this and you need to replace it in 2 locations. Once in the system32 folder and again in the hidden dllcache folder inside the system32 folder. Once you have them replaced reboot the system. Windows may say a file has been altered and ask for your CD to fix this problem. Just click close and ignore this or it will put back the old file and everything you just did will be in vain. Then try reinstalling the drivers agian. Then try Celestia. If this still hasn't fixed the problem then it is posible that your install of Windows has corupt files somewherein it. Next step would to be a reinstall of windows over the present install. If this can't fix the problem then save all the data you can and format and reinstall. As a profesional computer builder and service tech I can tell first hand that just because you got Windows any version installed doesn't mean that its a perfect install. I have installed hundred of copies of Windows in every version available and the chance that the installer goofed the install is very posible. If after I have done an install I see that some part of the system isn't working right from the get-go and driver updates don't fix the problem the system gets a format and a reinstall. As a profesional its more time comsuming trying to find out what went wrong in the install that it is to just reinstall and try again. Usualy the second install behaves a whole lot better. I have seen this quite oftem with brand new systems with all new parts that have never worked together before and have never had there legs streched so to speak or what you can call a shake-down trial. Any pro will tell you a brand new system is more likely to have trouble than one thats a few months old. It has to do with burn in time. But of course if this discription doesn't sound like you with your system than I would tend to think you may and I say MAY have a bad video card. It is not unheard of even an NVidia card being bad. If the card will not render than there is defently something wrong. There is also one other problem you may have to consider and that is the motherboard. At the computer shop I work at we ordered a few motherboards a few months back and not a one of them would work with any GeForce4 video card. Thats from the MX series all the way up the TI4600. The problem at first seemed to do with the power suplies we were trying to use with them. But as soom as we launched any kind of 3d application whether it was Diect3D or OpenGL the systems would lock up. After changing out the power supplies we thought we have the problem licked but no go. We ended up sending the motherboards back because what ended up beeing the problem was that the motherboard design did allow enough curent draw for the video cards to render in 3D. Simpley put the NVidia cards were starving for voltage that they couldn't get hence they the cards didn't work. I hope this isn't the problen you are up against. I can't give you the brand and make of the boards involved due to legal reasons. But to say this is a real posibility is very real. If you think it might be your card and you have an older system with and AGP bus try putting the card in that system and load the drivers and see if it works. If it doesn't than its the card plain and simple. Take it back to where you bought it and get a replacment. If it does work than I would have to think the next link in the chain is the motherboard itself. If you have the means [money] get another motherboard from a diferent manufactuter and then give this another try. If you have no problems and everything works out ok then you just found out what the problem was. If you still can take the problem motherboard back to where you got it and get a refund or an exchange or save it for building a system that won't be using a high end video card or sell it to someone else and let them deal with it. I know that sounds rather crass but its your money and if it works for general use than there really ins't a problem in that. The choice is yours of course and I wish you all the luck inthe world.

P.S.
If this system of yours is from Gateway or Dell or any of the other big computer companies your options are fewer and you may have to deal with the sevice departments for a few hours. But by all means if this is a prebuilt from a manufacturer get them to let you send it back for work and give them a detailed explanationas to what the problem is. A system from one of these guys should be treated with kit-gloves. I have never trusted any of them and never will. I have always said build it yourself or get a pro to do it for you. A prebuilt system is for the faint of heart and those who really don't want to learn anything about how a computer operates or how to put one together. Again Good Luck