I'm desperately hoping someone can help me here. I made a number of custom planets a few years ago. I wanted to fire up Celestia and toodle with them again. However, whenever I go to start Celestia, I get a problem. The splash screen comes up. It says it is loading various parts of the program (you can see their names go by on the bottom right hand side of the splash screen). Then the splash screen disappears. Windows Task Manager does not show it running in applications, but there is a Celestia process that is running. Nothing else happens. Celestia doesn't seem to be running, except I can see that there's a process in the background.


I'm Running on Windows 7 with an Intel(R) Core (TM) i7 CPU 920 @2.67 GHrz. I have 12GB of RAM. 64-bit Operating system. I have two AMD Radeon HD 5670 video cards. All drivers are up to date.

I'm asking here because ya'll seem to be the only people that run Celestia anymore. I LOVE THIS PROGRAM, and I'm very happy that you have decided to keep it (or an iteration of it) alive for the sake of science! Please help!

-Todd

Here are some things you can try:

0) Reboot your computer

1) Rename your current Celestia directory to something else (e.g. MyCelestia), then download and install a pristine copy of Celestia from http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/ and try running that.

If the new copy of Celestia crashes in the same way, then the problem is intrinsic to Celestia's interaction with your system, maybe a registry entry. If it doesn't crash, then the problem is due to come change you've made.

Assuming it's due to one of your changes:

2) Eliminate all of the addons: rename the "extras" folder somewhere outside your Celestia's directory tree, then try running Celestia.
If Celestia runs OK, then recreate the extras folder and copy your Addons back one at a time until Celestia fails.

3) One at a time, eliminate any modifications you've made to Celestia's configuration and/or data directories
e.g. move files that you've changed to some other directory, outside Celestia's directory tree and replace them by copying over the originals from the pristine version of Celestia installed in step 1 above.

I hope this helps a little.

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Selden

Thanks for such a swift reply! I should have mentioned I already tried deleting it an reinstalling it. I tried again after your post, this time renaming the directory and reinstalling. Same problem. It USED to work on this computer, but admittedly it's been a long time since I tried to run it. Any ideas where to start?

The only thing I can think of right now is that it's somehow being confused by your dual graphics cards.

Are they running in CrossFire mode or are they driving multiple displays?

Are you willing to unplug one of them as a test? Or can you disable one of them in software?

I'm having a very, very vague recollection of something similar being reported in the distant past, perhaps somehow related to a saved Celestia configuration setting no longer working after a hardware change. I've never tried it, but you might try deleting the registry values related to Celestia's runtime settings. I believe they'll be automatically recreated with "appropriate" values. If you use regedit to search for "celestia", you'll find a collection of values under HK_USERS. Unfortunately, I don't know what the individual bits mean, but you might try, for example, setting RenderPath to 0.

Another thing to try is to create a new non-privileged user account and installing Celestia under it. I believe that'll create a completely separate set of registry values, unique to that userid (but I could be wrong).

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Selden

you are NOT trying to install celestia to "C:\\Program Files\celestia " are you ???

that will ERROR

install it to C:\\Celestia

do not install into "program files" the royal mess of what MS calls UAC in 7 is well a royal mess

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"I don't pitch Linux to my friends, I let Microsoft do that for me."
Using OpenSUSE 42.1 & Scientific Linux 6.7

[quote="Selden"]The only thing I can think of right now is that it's somehow being confused by your dual graphics cards.

Are they running in CrossFire mode or are they driving multiple displays?
*Cross-fire*

Are you willing to unplug one of them as a test? Or can you disable one of them in software?

SO, I just disabled Crossfire, and guess what? It worked. I'm very relieved. Thank you for your help! Everyone!

You're very welcome.

I don't know anything about the adjustments available for CrossFire, but, if you haven't already, you might try changing some of its settings to see if any are compatible.

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Selden