You are here

Simile 4.7 eval doesn't show GUI when .exe is run?

Hi everyone --

I managed to get the GUI to pop open once, but now it won't (running simile.exe, version 4.7 trial). A couple of colleagues of mine are also having the same problems. When I run the .exe, I see a process for simile and that's all, no application.

I'm running on a WinXP professional machine w/ 1GB ram. The software is installed in C:\simile47 (no spaces in the dirname)

Are there any parameters I need to configure for the GUI/application to pop up?

Thanks!!

Forums: 

It can happen that if Simile exits abnormally, its process is still running even though the windows have all been closed. Then when you restart Simile, it will try to create a new window from the existing process rather than start a new one, and this might fail if the existing process has got stuck.

The solution is to kill all processes from the previous execution of Simile before starting it again, or else to reboot your computer before starting it. I'd like to know how you are closing Simile such that its process keeps running, in order that we can stop this happening.

--Jasper

jaspert wrote:
It can happen that if Simile exits abnormally, its process is still running even though the windows have all been closed. Then when you restart Simile, it will try to create a new window from the existing process rather than start a new one, and this might fail if the existing process has got stuck.

The solution is to kill all processes from the previous execution of Simile before starting it again, or else to reboot your computer before starting it. I'd like to know how you are closing Simile such that its process keeps running, in order that we can stop this happening.

--Jasper

Hi Jasper -- this occurs after a fresh installation. Therefore there is no previous exeution of Simile running.

Originally, yes, when I had it running and it wouldn't start again, I tried rebooting my computer - with no luck, so I uninstalled, reinstalled, and still got the same behavior..

I'm not sure this will help diagnose the problem any further :-/...

Any ideas?

Thanks for the quick response btw !!

jaspert wrote:
It can happen that if Simile exits abnormally, its process is still running even though the windows have all been closed. Then when you restart Simile, it will try to create a new window from the existing process rather than start a new one, and this might fail if the existing process has got stuck.

The solution is to kill all processes from the previous execution of Simile before starting it again, or else to reboot your computer before starting it. I'd like to know how you are closing Simile such that its process keeps running, in order that we can stop this happening.

--Jasper

Aha!! I think I may have gotten it!!

There's a HOME env variable that needed to be set (I saw this pop up when it said it couldn't write to some directory that it assumed to be my home due to permissions).

I set that HOME env var on my machine and it's starting up now.

Hopefully all's good now --

Thanks for your help!!!!

Well, that's strange -- I just deleted all traces of Simile off my machine and installed a new copy of the evaluation edition, and I got something very like the problem described here! That is, I got the taskbar button for the Simile desktop, but no desktop was visible.

What seemed to have happened was that the desktop was created below the visible screen area. To fix it, I right clicked on the taskbar button and chose Maximize. This fitted the desktop to the screen. I then chose File->New to create another desktop in front of the maximized one. Then I killed first the maximized desktop, then the new one.

The default behaviour of Simile on startup is to create the desktop in the same position it occupied when last exited, so following this, Simile starts correctly. Still, looks like I'll have to patch the distribution version.

--Jasper