VMD-L Mailing List

From: Stefan Boresch (stefan_at_mdy.univie.ac.at)
Date: Tue Dec 15 2020 - 14:16:56 CST

[I fully understand that you are not even getting that far.]

However, your earlier message with access issues reminded me of one
difference I noticed on Windows (compared to Linux, my normal
'habitat'). Specifically, when vmd is started via the icon (mouse
clicking) or through file association (open *.pdb with vmd), your
working directory is the install directory, and, e.g., (some) output
files (e.g. for rendering) default to that directory, to which you
(unless you are running as admin) have no write access. (This might be
the case on Linux, too, but there I start vmd practically always via
the command line in the directory I plan to work in ..)

While I work around this by starting vmd on Windows also from the
command line, this is 'fun' to explain to students who see the command line
for the first time.

Finally, I have seen vmd hang on Windows on occasion for quite some time (John provided an explanation a few weeks back here). When you get so far that vmd
does something in the powershell window, have you tried just hitting 'Enter'
and/or Ctrl-C? In most cases, vmd then starts up relatively quickly.

Best,
Stefan

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 04:03:45PM -0300, Gustavo Scheiffer wrote:
> Hi,
> Yes, I always confirm the administrator privileges pop-up. The installation
> itself seems to finish without any problems and there's plenty of disk
> space. I tried executing VMD via Powershell to investigate further and
> verified that the program seems to quit (maybe crashing?) right after
> opening.
>
> Output from Powershell:
>
> PS C:\VMD> .\vmd.exe
> PS C:\VMD> .\vmd.exe
> PS C:\VMD> .\vmd.exe
> PS C:\VMD> .\vmd.exe
> PS C:\VMD> .\vmd.exe
> PS C:\VMD> .\vmd.exe
> PS C:\VMD> .\vmd.exe
> PS C:\VMD> .\vmd.exe (yes, I needed to execute vmd 8 times to get the
> output below)
> Info) VMD for WIN32, version 1.9.3 (November 30, 2016)
> Info) http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> Info) Email questions and bug reports to vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> Info) Please include this reference in published work using VMD:
> Info) Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., `VMD - Visual
> Info) Molecular Dynamics', J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.
> Info) -------------------------------------------------------------
> Info) Multithreading available, 4 CPUs detected.
> Info) Free system memory: 1075MB (26%)
> PS C:\VMD> -- (VMD just stopped here?)
>
> Worth noting that the warning message mentioned in the previous email only
> appears sometimes (sometimes the VMD window just popup for less than a
> second). Is there some conflict happening? For the record, I'm using an
> Intel HD Graphics 4600 (drivers up to date).
>
> Em ter., 15 de dez. de 2020 às 03:46, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> escreveu:
>
> > Hi,
> > When you try installing VMD, do you have administrator priveleges?
> > Are you out of disk space?
> >
> > Best,
> > John Stone
> > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 04:01:30AM -0300, Gustavo Scheiffer wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > I just can't manage to make VMD work on my PC (Windows 10). I tried
> > many
> > > different versions, always resulting in the same problem. When I
> > click
> > > on the VMD.exe, Windows exhibits a warning message "Windows cannot
> > > access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the
> > > appropriate permissions to access the item". I was really hoping to
> > use
> > > VMD to learn NAMD.
> > > Best regards,
> > > Gustavo Scheiffer
> >
> > --
> > NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> > Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> > University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> > http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Phone: 217-244-3349
> > http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> >