McIDAS-V fails after installing Cygwin on Windows XP

[wiweathergirl]

I have been running McIDAS-V for a while. I just installed Cygwin on my Windows XP and now McIDAS-V fails to start. The two main windows appear briefly, then go away. I have a "JAVA Virtual Machine" error in my log file. Any suggestions?

[davep]

Hi wiweathergirl,

McIDAS-V uses the Cygwin subsystem--specifically the file "cygwin1.dll--to access local datasets via local ADDE servers. Whenever the first program (#1) that uses Cygwin is started, Windows loads the first cygwin1.dll file it finds, usually in the same directory as the program you are starting. However, when another program (#2) requiring Cygwin is started, Windows will use the cygwin1.dll library that is already loaded. This can lead to DLL version problems, as program #1 may have started a different version of Cygwin than program #2 requires. Because of the way Java starts the local ADDE servers this can cause McIDAS-V to crash if the Cygwin version that it requires is different than the one already in memory.

One solution to this problem is to stop any other processes that use Cygwin before starting McIDAS-V.

If it is necessary to run both programs at the same time, another possible solution is to resolve any Cygwin version problems by ensuring that all cygwin1.dll files on your computer are the same version (not recommended--see your system administrator)

[TJS]

Another option might be to use another x-server, such as x-win32_2010.

This seems to have helped me, when I has having the same type issues.