Jim Rockford wrote:
On Windows XP I had a working 1.4.3-5 installation, which I got working
only
with a great deal of pain (owing to missing Miktex files, which
one-by-one I
had to install at Miktex's behest). I thought I'd try out 1.4.4-1 just for
fun, hoping for some enhanced (faster!) performance. In this effort I
first
uninstalled Lyx (keeping my existing and apparently sufficient Miktex,
ghostscript, ImageMagick, etc installations). After an extended delay
while
the Lyx installer did some heavy ruminations on my XP system, Lyx
1.4.4-1finally installed. I fired up the executable and was treated
to nothing
except a message about "lyxc.exe" crashing. It just didn't work out of the
box, even though a reinstallation of 1.4.3-5 worked perfectly. Oh well.
With each successive Lyx update, the installation seems to be taking longer
and longer, with more and more glitches. I was able to install the
1.3series on Windows with no trouble.
I'm curious if anyone else out there is having similar problems. Why does
the installer take so long anyway? It seems to take 5 minutes, even if I
already have Miktex and all the other stuff installed.
Someone over on the developer list reported lyxc crashing after
installing 1.4.4-1. On the other hand, I've installed it twice with no
problems. (I can crash 1.4.4-1 once I'm into it, but I have no problem
starting it, and so far it works pretty well for me in limited testing.)
You might try opening a DOS window in the LyX bin directory and running
'lyxc.exe -dbg any'. Perhaps something in the debug output will
identify where LyX is crashing. (Incidentally, lyxc.exe is the actual
LyX executable. As of the last couple of Windows versions, lyx.exe
seems to be just a launcher, I think in an effort to avoid unwanted DOS
windows.)
As to why there's a delay at the end of the launcher, after all the
software is installed, the configuration script is run for the first
time (same script that handles Tools->Reconfigure). It goes looking for
assorted LaTeX-related executables and a bunch of document classes, and
it tests existence of the document classes by asking MikTeX to compile
tests instances of each. Depending on how fast your PC is, that can eat
a bit of time.
/Paul
