Windows requirements needs updating

[papaf]

Hi all,
I spent the weekend fighting a problem with PixInsight on windows. I had to reinstall my HD due to crash, and PixInsight wasn't willing to start. Windows printed a fairly standard and quite useless error message about the configuration of the app being broken. It was in italian, so I can't translate it to english correctly.
Searching the net I found quite a few causes, but nothing worked. Until I installed .net 3.5 sp1. I didn't see it in the requirements so I didn't know I needed it.
Can we update the webpage?

Thanks!

Fabio

[Conor]

Did you reinstall the hard drive itself, or did you reinstall windows on it?

When you fresh install windows, it's worth running the update utility
which will update the extraneous bloat like the .NET framework to the
latest version.

[papaf]

The update will only work if you have installed .net in the first place. .net is not a standard part of windows xp, at least not on my copy, which admittedly it's quite old. Once I installed .net, it got updated, but not before. And since there's no mention of .net requirement anywhere, I had to go by trial and error.

[Nocturnal]

Interesting. .NET seems like something Juan would avoid like the plague as it's not cross-platform (ignoring Mono). I'll be curious to hear Juan's comments on this.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Fabio,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this problem. Sander's guess is correct: I don't like .NET at all. And you can be sure PixInsight does not depend on .NET; not at least in anything that depends on decisions I can freely make (in the hypothetical case I'd want to implement PixInsight on a virtual machine I'd choose Java, but that's another story).

The problem is that old (very old!) versions of Windows lack a redistributable package that is needed to run PixInsight on those systems:

For 32-bit Windows versions:
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A5C84275-3B97-4AB7-A40D-3802B2AF5FC2&displaylang=en

For 64-bit Windows versions:
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BA9257CA-337F-4B40-8C14-157CFDFFEE4E&displaylang=en

Newer versions of Windows either have the redistributables or understand the way PixInsight distributes its own version of them, so this update isn't necessary. As I've said only vintage versions of Windows require this.

I'll update the system requirements and FAQ pages to inform about this. Sorry for the troubles.

[papaf]

Hmm, still strange though as it started to work again after I installed .net 3.0. Is it possible this runtime gets installed by .net somehow?
By the way, this is a pretty old PC which came with only a reinstall xp cd, you know the drill. So I always have to start at the stone age...

Fabio