Unable to Upgrade from 2.63 - Crashes on Startup - MS Visual C++ 2008 Installed

Hi All,

I’ve been stuck in Blender 2.63 for awhile now. When 2.64 came out awhile back, I tried to upgrade, but when I did, Blender would crash on startup. So I’ve been living with 2.63 and now that 2.68a is out I figured I’d try again, but I get the same problem. The error message is:

“This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way”

When I go to install the MS Visual C++ Redistributable from the link and per the instructions on the download page, my system tells me it is already installed.

I’m wondering if anybody knows the most likely reason(s) why Blender versions up till 2.63a will install and run well on my machine, but 2.64 and 2.68a will not? I understand there are many possibilities, but if anyone knows of any common issues for this situation, I could start my troubleshooting there.

SPECS:
3.07GHz Intel Core i7 machine running Windows 7 Pro (v 6.1.7601 SP1)
6GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 580, 512MB RAM

Any and all help appreciated. I’d love to be able to check out the latest & greatest Blender version!

Thank you to all,
Bud

If all else fails I always suggest a full system wipe and reinstall. I try and do one every year. No matter how hard you try any system connected to the internet is going to at the very least develop what I call bloat and in most cases you damage the OS by deleting folders with shared dll’s and such and pick up spyware/malware. A more experienced professional might have ways to guard against this but in my experience some things can only be fixed for sure by a complete system wipe and reinstall. No matter what your computer will run better afterwards.

Thank you, Brent,

The thought does cross my mind every once-in-awhile when I find my system running slow for no good reason!

Peace,
Bud

Hi, just for info, the newer Blender versions have Python integrated.
No separate Python installation is necessary.

Cheers, mib.

Blender’s implementation is still clumsy: Blender finds an older (incompatible) version of Python on your PC (which you may need because you develop Python scripts for other purposes), but instead of using its bundled compatible Python then, it just crashes and confuses the user with a cryptic error message.