PWP7 does not run on Windows XP SP3

[ICampos]

I'm a satisfied user of PWP6. However, since I bought my license recently, I was offered the upgrade to PWP7.
I decided to try, removed PWP6 and installed PWP7. Then I found out it simply doesn't run on XP SP3.
After some head scratching I've figured what's happening: PWP6, as well as its complementary libraries were built using MS Visual Studio 2008, which is XP compatible out of the box, while PWP7 (in fact just PW70.EXE) was built using the newer MS Visual Studio 2012, which is *not* compatible with XP, even if SP3, right out of the box... For more about MSVC 2012 and Win XP SP3, read this and this. Although (as the links I've just given tell) it's possible to constrain MSVC 2012 to work with XP, right now, perhaps, the easier solution would be to build another version of PW70 using the older MS Visual Studio 2008, and make it available to users on Windows XP. Hope you can solve this issue, I do think PWP7 is really interesting. I'll keep on your excellent PWP6, meanwhile.

[Dieter Mayr]

I do run PWP 7 under XP SP3 successfully.
On that machine I have running a 2.6 (or was it 2.8 ? ) GHz AMD processor an 2 GB of RAM.
Although PWP 7 does not run anymore on my very old laptop with a just 1GHz Processor and (today) minimalistic 500 MB of RAM (as much as I can get in).
I have no Idea about the minimum hardware needed for a XP-system, but maybe Jonathan or Kiril can tell.

Are you sure you have downloaded and installed the 32-bit version and not the 64-bit version ?

[ICampos]

Thanks for your reply, Dieter! Are you sure you're running 32-bit PWP v. 7.0.10?
My hardware is an Asus A7V600-X board, with an unlocked Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton) running at 2337 MHz and 3 GiB of DDR RAM...
So I do think it's generally comparable to the hardware you described you're using.
PS: Yes, I'm sure I did install the 32-bit version of PWP70.EXE, because when I used PE Explorer on it to check at the Subsystem and Linker versions, it would've alerted me, 1st thing, if the file it was checking was 64-bit.

[Dieter Mayr]

Yes, I did actually fresh download PWP7.0.10 V32 and installed it on my old machine, as I had still a old beta version on it.
I dont use that old machine for picture editing anymore, it works as a file server mostly, now.
Maybe your download is corrupted somehow, and you may try to download it new ?
From what I can say, your machine should be working well from a hardware point of view.

Actual, there was a problem to get PWP running under XP with the very first beta version, but this was solved in the next version, and every version since did run on my XP machine.

[ksinkel]

PWP 7 has been tested and works correctly on our Windows XP machines here. It's unlikely that it is particularly sensitive to hardware configuration, however you should make sure that all Windows software updates are installed.

Kiril

[SFeinstein]

Are you getting a specific error while running PWP or does it just crash without any kind of message?

[ICampos]

No, I do get the usual error happened window, so it's reasonably well behaved, not a hard crash pure and simple.

PWP7_Error.PNG (15.54 KiB) Viewed 8187 times

My XP SP3 is EN-US and is fully up-to-date, including this month's updates as released by MS on patch tuesday.
I've done some more tests and attached the resulting logs, as a .7z file
The relevant file (pw70.exe) has:

For version 7.0.10.0
8,299,520 bytes
CRC32: 3019A565
MD5: 77BC8FD7E455E6ABAE59E69CC285BD4C

For version 7.0.9.0
8,291,840 bytes
CRC32: D946BCF8
MD5: 6152D0AED6BAC627969ED053107BDB23

Both crash exactly in the same way.
Another possibility for the origin of the problem is if PW70.EXE relies on SSE2 instructions, while PW60.EXE does not.
The Athlon XP (Barton) is not SSE2 capable, although it processes SSE and MMX.

[ICampos]

Sorry for the bump, but the forum software says I cannot edit my previous post anymore...

I guess I've just hit jackpot! And, in fact, I don't like it a bit... :(
PWP7 (v 7.0.10) runs OK in demo mode on my Asus Eee PC 900, which has an Intel Celeron M 353 (900 MHz) and 2 GiB of RAM...
This seems to confirm the issue is really related to lack of SSE2 support.
Is there any chance of a non-SSE2 build being in the works (even if just to settle the point once and for all)?
Thanks a lot for all your help and replies.

[Dieter Mayr]

In my XP-machine works a AMD Sempron processor which supports SSE2 (had to look for it, never heard of it before :( )
I will check at the weekend what processor works in my old laptop and if it supports SSE2.
If not, would be a strong argument for your theory.

[ICampos]

Thank you very much, Dieter!
I shall wait news from you.