Dear Dev's, THE ENVIRONMENT: Windows Vista, recent GnuCash Windows nightly build (particular build does not seem to be important).
THE PROBLEM: From time to time in the forums someone will post the "GnuCash will not get past the splash screen" issue. It seems to come up with some replies signalling some sort of DLL or software conflict issue. Well, I came across it myself recently, and no amount of searching the forums, reinstalling, copying a range or related directories, and anything else I could think of solved the problem. Even a WinPenPack portable GnuCash installation in C:\Programs could not get me a working GnuCash environment. However, my USB key portable WinPenPack version still ran happily (up to and including the most recent nightly build). THE ISSUE: I don't really know, except to say that I frequently install and uninstall a variety of open source & freeware software. I religiously use Glary Utilities and CCleaner to keep the registry clean & defragged. I have good anti virus software. I have run GnuCash for a long time, but must have "broken" it recently by leaving some incompatible DLL's somewhere on the PC that GnuCash picks up before the good, clean stuff it installs itself. I do not take RegShots every time I install something new, nor do I install trial software into a VM - perhaps I should. I do not run GnuCash after every new software installation to check it still runs. It should not be that fragile. THE QUESTION: Has anyone had a good look at how a good GnuCash installation can go bad? I am happy to attempt to break a GnuCash installation on one of my PC's to see if there is anything we can learn that may make future versions more robust. Is anyone able to suggest where there may be some weaknesses in the the current Windows implementation, or where there is a liklihood that GnuCash DLL's may be substituted by DLL's in other directories on the PC? THE WORK AROUND: Scorched earth! I formatted my PC and installed Windows 7 on my Visa box. Extreme? Yes. I just could not get GnuCash to work any other way. I have not had to do this to get any other important application (for me) to run in years, if ever. GnuCash is running fine now on Windows 7. I will be vigilant to try to identify how it breaks, should I have the same situation sometime in the future. Does anyone have any suggestions of areas to investigate? I know I should be more careful with my PC environment if I don't want to break it in future. Regards, Kim Wood -- View this message in context: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GNUCASH-WINDOWS-PROBLEM-SOLUTION-tp2293547p2293547.html Sent from the GnuCash - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel