New install keeps shutting down

[LD]

Hi All,
Been a while since I've posted--or imaged for that matter. Finally got around to downloading an update, my first since the initial commercial release. Now, whenever I try to execute a process (histogram transform, alignment, others I've tried), the program immediately just quits and closes.

Here is the file I downloaded: PI-win-x86-01.05.06.0525-nsi-20090720-c.exe

Granted I have an old laptop I've been using: Toshiba with Win XP, Pentium 4 2.66 GHz, 480 MB. Never had trouble on the initial release or previous versions.

I did a aoftware uninstall of the older version before installing. After this happened, I also uninstalled version 1.5 and tried a fresh install.

Thanks for any ideas,
Larry

[Carlos Milovic]

Hi Larry. I'm using a laptop with a similar configuration to yours. A bit older processor, but with 2Gb of RAM. I had not experienced any crash with PI (I'm using the developers release, but it should be the same).

Let's see if Juan haves any hint...

[LD]

Carlos,
Thanks for the reply. I'm wondering if I just need more HD space--currently have about 5 GB available on a 40 GB internal. Told you it was old! But I've only tried single images and simple processes so far so I would hope that much space would be okay.

I do have a newly built Core 2 Duo machine with 8GB RAM running Vista 64 bit. Great graphics and all, built mostly for my kids' gaming and videos, etc...not that I can get anywhere near that computer! But sure would be nice to use it for PI if I could get them away from it for awhile.

Anyway, will try to free up some more HD space in this old workhorse in the meantime.

Larry

[LD]

One more thing that might help: I noticed that there is still a Pixinsight 32 icon in the PCL folder (not the BIN folder which has the new core icon) even though I ran the unistall for it. Clicking on the PI 32 Icon brings up this message:

This application has failed to start because LCMS.DLL was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.

Don't know if this means anything, but just wanted to note it in case it does.

Larry

[Carlos Milovic]

I don't think that it is a HD space issue. I run the 1.1 core version on a Pentium 3 without problems and sometimes I have on my temporal disk less than 300Mb of free space Of course, it is a linux machine, so there may be an unfair comparison <vbg>
Anyway, you should consider buy more RAM. There is the real bottleneck of your system right now (I'm not saying that this is the reason of your crashing problems).


To solve your folder issues... Uninstall the application. Now, explore your disk, and delete the PCL folder if it is still there. Now try a full installation, after restarting the laptop. Now, the first time you launch PI, keep the Ctrl key pressed. It used to be a "reset" backdoor, asking you if you want to delete all the registry inputs. Don't know if this option still works (I'm on linux right now... I'll confirm you later when I can get my hands on the windows laptop).

If there was something wrong during previous installations, that should fix it.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Larry,

I'm affraid to say that less than 512 MB is really too little RAM to run PixInsight. In fact, the recommended minimum is 1 GB for practical purposes. You know, graphical applications become more and more complex, they have more and more eye-candy and sophistication, and all that exacts a price in terms of hardware requirements.

The problem is definitely not your processor. One of my test boxes is a vintage Pentium IV HT 2.66, exactly as your old laptop, but it has 2 GB of RAM and Windows XP SP 3. PixInsight runs nicely on that machine. If you have 5 GB of free disk space that's enough and doesn't justify the problems you have. You definitely need more RAM.

The advice Carlos has given you about resetting/deleting the application is perfectly valid.

[LD]

Juan and Carlos,
Memory on order! As always, thanks for the help.
Larry