Hi,

As you can understand I am fairly new to the site.

I have downloaded the windows installer and tried to perform the installation on
a standalone machine.
Pov-ray did not make any shortcuts on the desktop or any menu entries.

Anyway, I thought I could make the links myself so I exported some .POV and .INI
files from my cad program and tried to load them to POV-ray.

There POV-Ray gave me an error that it could not load the .ini file.

I then tried to use the demo to see what is the proper procedure to load the
files but I have noticed that there was not INI directory in the POV-Ray
installation tree under .../ProgramFiles/POV-Ray/v3.7/ directory.

I think that something was not done correctly with the installation.

I would appreciate any help on the matter.

Kind regards

George

Post a reply to this message

Am 24.01.2017 um 15:43 schrieb GeorgeB:

> I have downloaded the windows installer and tried to perform the installation on
> a standalone machine.
> Pov-ray did not make any shortcuts on the desktop or any menu entries.
> 
> Anyway, I thought I could make the links myself so I exported some .POV and .INI
> files from my cad program and tried to load them to POV-ray.
> 
> There POV-Ray gave me an error that it could not load the .ini file.

What version of POV-Ray are you using, and what binary (32-bit, 32-bit
SSE2, or 64-bit)?

Also, it might be helpful to know where you obtained the installer from,
and what version the installer identifies as (right-click in Windows
Explorer, properties, details).

If you are aware of any ways in which your installation of Windows is
might be unconventional, please also let us know.

> I then tried to use the demo to see what is the proper procedure to load the
> files but I have noticed that there was not INI directory in the POV-Ray
> installation tree under .../ProgramFiles/POV-Ray/v3.7/ directory.

POV-Ray 3.7 installs the user-specific stuff, and even the sample scenes
and standard include files, in <DOCUMENTS>/POV-Ray/v3.7/ to avoid
potential problems with access rights.

> I think that something was not done correctly with the installation.

Sounds like that, though I'm not aware of any similar reports in over 3
years.

Some things you could attempt:

- Uninstall and re-install POV-Ray.
- Run "pvengine64.exe /INSTALL" (presuming you're using a 64-bit OS).
- Try the current 3.7.1-beta.2 instead (note that it will install in
"v3.7-beta" rather than "v3.7").

Post a reply to this message

I'm running Windows 7 too. If I understand correctly, it sounds like the main
problem is that you're missing the POV-Ray 'icon' on your desktop, so that you
can't even start the program(?)

Here's how to find the POV-Ray 'application' itself, then you can make your own
desktop link. (I hope I'm not being too simplistic about your problem.)
POV-Ray's main 'application' (or rather, it's 'engine') is not actually in your
DOCUMENTS folder, it's elsewhere.

Go to--
Windows START icon
COMPUTER (there are *two* of these icons in my Win 7; you want the one that will
show your C hard drive)
LOCAL DISK (C:)
PROGRAM FILES (for 64-bit apps) or PROGRAM FILES (X86) for 32-bit apps
POV-RAY
3.7
BIN
PVENGINE64 (or PVENGINE)-- this is what starts POV-Ray. Make a 'shortcut' to put
on your desktop.

I hope this helps.

Post a reply to this message