Mathcad 14.0 M020 does not start on WIN 7 Professional

[fredericksonnic]

After a "clean" install of MathCad 14.0 M020 on Win 7 Professional (service pack 1) MathCad does not start.

I click on he Mcad Icon, the hour glass appears, and then vanishes. The error below is found in the WIndows even logs.

I did a complete uninstall, and deleted as many regsitry keys as I could find but after a reinstall the problem still persists.

mathcad.exe
14.0.2.5
47a9b0aa
KERNELBASE.dll
6.1.7601.17651
4e2111c0
e06d7363
0000d36f
117c
01cc6fd1a58bc63a
C:\Program Files\Mathcad\Mathcad 14\mathcad.exe
C:\Windows\system32\KERNELBASE.dll
e400e0ec-dbc4-11e0-a667-0026b9aa08f7

Anyone having a similar experience?

Thanks,

Fritz

[JerzyCierpicki]

I had a similar problem with installing Mathcad 14 M020 on clean Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

What helped? - after installing some other software (Microsoft Office 2003, AutoCad etc.) Mathcad installed and worked properly.

If you want clean Mathcad install on frash, clean Windows 7 you must check if installed are:

a. Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0

b. MSXML 4.0 SP2 or later

c. Microsoft Data Access Components MDAC 2.6 or later

d. VS2005 SP1 DLLs (usually installed with Microsoft Office) - could be downloaded manually from: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5638

Jerzy

[fredericksonnic]

Thank you Jerzy for the information. I reinstalled dot-NET and MSXML. I think MDAC is absorbed into the Win7 architecture. The VS2005 was of interest since I may have installed Visual C++ on my laptop prior to the MathCad failure. I deinstalled Visual C++, reinstalled MathCad but it still does not work. Reinstalling VS2005 didnt' help either.

I find one other post on this forum with the same problem about a year ago and no solution was given. (http://communities.ptc.com/message/152789#152789)

I expect that this relates to the KERNELBASE.dll. I can't find much information on it but it vaguely looks like an application startup module.

All told, this problem is likely due to the blend of MS dll's installed and some services invoked by MathCad. Probably the solution would involve MS spending time looking at my dll installations but this is not likely to happen. The dumb solution is to resintall WIN 7 and start from scratch- not likely either.

It is sad that MS has, in 20 years, put us back to the point where we were 40 years ago when we used mainframe computers to do physics, complete with a full time staff of systems programmers to maintain the software inter-realtions. MathCad is the sixth program that I can no longer use as a result of Win 7, along with my optical can electronics programs.

Regards,

Fritz

[VladimirN]

Please look at an inclusiveness of components of a .NET Framework & MSXML in Win7. It is possible to look at these components in "Cotrol Panel" - "Programs" - "Programs and Features" - "Windows Features". Further they can be activated, having put down a tick.

P.S. When you install Mathcad, the installation program writes by the default installation log "ptcsetup.log" (in Win Vista it is in a directory "My documents"). Try to find this file ("ptcsetup.log") using Windows Search and to attach it to the message.

[fredericksonnic]

Thank you Vladmir.

I am running win 7. I searched about the C: drive, MyDocuments and so forth and could not find a ptcsetup.log or anything similar. I have attached the result of the Windows Features panel. Clearly some of the required features don't have boxes checked. Can you tell me which ones are checked on your system and I will try it (I am a little leary of turning them all on)-

I appreciate the information

Fritz

[VladimirN]

Fritz, hello!

You need to activate the following options. NET Framework (see screenshot):

[fredericksonnic]

OK-I turned on these services but MathCad still will not start and I get the same (Kernelbase.dll) error.

[JerzyCierpicki · Accepted solution]

Hi Fritz,

See attached screenshot from my computer - these options are not activated so probably it is not a reason of your problems.

I am not sure that my problem was related to kernelbase.dll (it was about 1.5 year ago), but as I wrote earlier, for me helped installing my other software before installing Mathcad 14 M020.

Did you try to install all required components on fresh Windows 7 before installing Mathcad? or after installing Mathcad?

Jerzy

[fredericksonnic]

Jerzy

MathCad was the last thing I installed on this computer (e.g. I uninstalled and reinstalled it after it began to fail last week).

The WIN7 platform that I am using was installed a year ago. At that time I assume all of the "important" components were installed. I keep it update with all the patches (which may be why MathCad started to fail to begin with!).

Short of formating my drive and starting WIN7 from scratch I am reaching the end of ideas here. I can see if I can get any help from MS. (Our institution may have a support contract with them).

I appreciate your having given this some attention!

Fritz

[VladimirN]

Do you have an active maintenance for Mathcad? If yes then create a new request ("Case") for technical support PTC, here: http://www.ptc.com/appserver/cs/case/case_logger.jsp

P.S. Also try to upgrade/install the latest build Mathcad 14 M035.

[fredericksonnic]

I do not have a support contract. Depending upon our funding next year I hope to buy the new release of MathCad with the maintainence.

To my knowledge MathCad no longer offers patches of release upgrades to their customers unless they have a maintainence contract so I cannot install M035.

Thanks

Fritz

[JerzyCierpicki]

As you have no PTC support and nothing helps, you can try to backup Mathcad 14 license and install Mathcad 15 trial version.

If Mathcad 15 will have similar problems, then probably something wrong is in your software, but if it works you can try to install Mathcad 14 and then check if problem still exist.

BTW

Remember, that during Mathcad 15 installation Mathcad 14 is uninstalled.

Jerzy

[VladimirN]

...To my knowledge MathCad no longer offers patches of release upgrades to their customers unless they have a maintainence contract so I cannot install M035...

That's right.

[VladimirN]

frederick sonnichsen wrote:

...I am running win 7. I searched about the C: drive, MyDocuments and so forth and could not find a ptcsetup.log or anything similar....

I have tried to install two releases of Mathcad 14 - M020 and M035 (the given release is last for MC14). Program was installed on Win XP Professional with SP3. And here the result: the log file "ptcsetup.log" has been written only for release M035 in the following directory: "C:\ptcsetup.log". For Release M020 installation process doesn't written a log file.

[fredericksonnic]

OK-the final wrap up on all of this. Last week, MATLAB failed, probably as a result of some of my maneuvers to get MathCad running.

I bought another hard drive (I like to replace them from time to time and they are cheap!) and reinstalled WIN7 and all else on it. MatchCad (and MATLAB) is working fine now.

Years ago I worked as a systems programmer on UNIVAC machines. We had a full tiime team justed dedicated to maintaining software interrelations. I guess we have come full circle and need to start hring teams systems programmers to maintain our laptops! Having worked inside the field, I am shocked at some of the "Rube Goldberg" systems that professional vendors crank out in order to avoid learning and using proper programming practices (not accusing MathCad however). Probably some vendor (maybe even MS) slipped a dll on top of others and this whole problem was launched. Fortunately it only took 1 evening and about 4 beers to reinstall my complete laptop.

I want to thank all of you for the help-I know this takes time and it is appreciated. Hopefully our lab will get some more funding this year and I can upgrade MathCad again-

Cheers

Fritz

[VladimirN]

I'm glad that now Mathcad works fine.

P.S. And of course you need to upgrade to MC15!