Can't open Winboard

[elduderino]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum, and hoping that i do right here.

Tried to open my winboard to login on freechess.org yesterday, and got an error-message. Couldn't open the program. I used that hundreds of times before on another machine and never had any problem with the program. It's a very very good software -thanx a lot to the programmers of it!

This is a printscreen that shows the error-popup that came, when i tried to open it.



Maybe someone of the pros here can help me with that. Thanx in advance.

[H.G.Muller]

I suppose you tried to start WinBoard here through the FICS item in the Windows start menu?

The menu shortcut that invokes WinBoard contains a filename of the ini file WinBoard should read at startup, and this error popup indicates that the ini file couldnot be opened. This can have several reasons. The file could not exist, or be at a place different from where the shortcut says it is. The filename that it mentions looks a bit strange. Did you really install WinBoard in a folder called "(x86)"? If you go with the Windows file explorer to his C:\(x86)\WinBoard-4.7.3\WinBoard folder, do you see a winboard.exe and a winboard.ini file? If there are, you should be able to start WinBoard by double-clicking the winboard.exe file, and then tick 'use Internet Chess Server' and select freechess.org from the Starup Dialog this opens. Or you could just drag the FICS.xop file you find in that same folder on top of the winboard.exe.

[elduderino]

Thank u.

I suppose you tried to start WinBoard here through the FICS item in the Windows start menu?

True

The winboard.ini-file is there in the folder.
Folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-4.7.3\WinBoard
Winboard.exe is there too.

you should be able to start WinBoard by double-clicking the winboard.exe file, and then tick 'use Internet Chess Server' and select freechess.org from the Starup Dialog this opens.

This works.

Can i make a short-cut for fast start directly on freechess.org?

Actually the shortcut looks like this:
Destination: "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-4.7.3\WinBoard\winboard.exe" -ini C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-4.7.3\WinBoard\winboard.ini -at FICS.xop
Execute in: "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-4.7.3\WinBoard"

Maybe i have to change that destination-code in the shortcut?

[H.G.Muller]

The problem seems to be that there are no quotes around the filename that stands after -ini. This makes it choke on the "Program Files (x86)" part, interpreting the spaces as separation between different filenames. Hence the strange error message, which only mentions a name starting with "(x86)". Enclosing the

C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-4.7.3\WinBoard\winboard.ini

within double quotes in the shortcut should fix it.

I guess this should count as a bug in the installer; when it creates the menu shortcuts it should have guarded for the possibility that the folder in which the user installs can have spaces in its name.

[elduderino]

Wonderful! Thank You very very much. That was it.
Problem solved.

*Edit

I guess this should count as a bug in the installer; when it creates the menu shortcuts it should have guarded for the possibility that the folder in which the user installs can have spaces in its name.

Not sure, i think not, because i had installed the programm on my old computer (same OS installation and setup) with the same Installer-file. And never had this problem before. No idea where this problem was coming from.