1.3 fails to load but 1.2 works

[grantb]

I am running XP Pro, service pack 3 on a ThinkPad T61. I have been using Audacity for a few years. Several months ago I downloaded and installed 1.3 and had used 1.3.9, 1.3.10, 1.3.11 then 1.3.12 without problem.

About a month ago, my Windows suffered a minor meltdown. When I recovered, 1.3.6 would no longer start, displaying the error message:

"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150004). Click on OK to terminate the application."

I uninstalled, rebooted, and reinstalled all the versions of 1.3 that I had saved (.9, .10, .11, and .12), multiple times in varied sequence, all to no avail. I even reinstalled XP service pack 3, which did nothing. The same error message was all I could get.

So I installed 1.2.6. Bingo - works fine even though the plugins.cfg file is empty.

But all attempts at installing 1.3 after showing that 1.2 works still produced the same error message.

My conclusion: 1.3 depends on some Windows routine that is not used in 1.2 and that routine was corrupted in the meltdown. One other hint - the only other program that seems to have been affected in the same way is WinAmp (although none of the older versions work either). All other programs that use the audio (Total Recorder, Windows media Player, VLC Player, etc.) work normally.

Does anyone have an idea what file could cause this behavior?

[waxcylinder]

I have successfully installed most 1.3 systems on my XP-HE and XP-PRO - I currently have 1.3.7 thru 1.3.12 Betas and several nightly builds of Alpha 1.3.13 - no problem installing or running any of them.

If you have 1.3.6 that is now pretty old - upgrade to 1.3.12 - get it from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/

WC

[steve]

upgrade to 1.3.12 - get it from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/

If you still have the same problem, try the ZIP version (available at the same place).

[grantb]

Sorry, my reference to 1.3.6 should be to 1.3.x where x has been 9, 10, 11 and 12. the key here is that all of those did work on my machine until XP hiccupped. When I regained control, none of them worked while 1.2.6 still did. My interpretation is that some component of XP went away. That component was called by 1.3.x and not by 1.2.6. The call could be in the source code or could be in the compiler used. I only downloaded the compiled versions, so I do not know any way to check for changes in the compiler.

So my question is, what component in XP could cause these symptoms, a 0xc0150004 error on loading for 1.3.x but not for 1.2.6?

[steve]

My interpretation is that some component of XP went away. That component was called by 1.3.x and not by 1.2.6. The call could be in the source code or could be in the compiler used.

My guess is that Audacity 1.3 is using a more recent C++ runtime that is either not installed or broken on your computer.

Go to the Lenovo website and check to see if they have updated drivers for your computer, then go to Microsoft update and do a full update.
If you still have the problem, try installing Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package from the Microsoft Website http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/d ... laylang=en

[grantb]

Bingo! Loading the C++ SP1 does the trick. And, of course, now that you mentioned it, I had just uninstalled the Visual C++ prior to the meltdown. I had installed a few years ago but not used it in the last year. I did not understand that there was a set of runtime support programs that would go away with it.

But now 1.3.12 works, just like before. Thank you very much for the clear and correct advice. Now all I need to do is start in on the backlog of audio editing that has built up.