0.92.2 immediate crash zlib1.dll

[David Pearce]

Windows 7 64 bit
I get inkscape.exe - Entry Point Not Found
The procedure entry point inflateValidate could not be located in the dynamic link library zlib.dll.

0.92 was working on this PC

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

This sounds like you have conflicting libraries.

First of all could you confirm if the error message really mentions "zlib.dll" instead of "zlib1.dll" (as written in the bug title)? "zlib1.dll" is the correct one that is supplied in our packages and should be used by Inkscape.

Could you then please check the following:

1. Is there a file "zlib1.dll" in you Inkscape installation folder?
2. What's the date of this file? (it should be dated 2017-01-17)
3. What's the command line output of "where zlib1.dll"
   when executed in Inkscape's installation directory?

4. If you run Inkscape from a clean folder
   (e.g. extract the 7z archive to an empty folder)
   does it work then?
   One thing that might have happened is that some files from an
   earlier Inkscape installation are still present which will
   cause conflicts with the new release.

[David Pearce (halzia)]

I cannot check that PC immediately, already the weekend in Malaysia, will check as soon as possible.

I tried installing on a very similar machine after carefully removing the previous version and traces of an earlier one. This clean install works, with the correct zlib1 build date.

[David Pearce (halzia)]

It was zlib1.dll
I found a 2016 version of zlib1.dll in C:\Program Files\Inkscape, left over from 0.92.0
Uninstalled 0.92.2 and then 0.92.0 and reinstalled 0.92.2 and now it works
The installation instructions need to emphasise removing older versions first

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

Thanks for feedback!

Could you comment on what type of installer you used for 0.92.0 and how you tried to update to 0.92.2 initially?
Usually the .exe installer *should* be able to update old files (although it does not delete no longer necessary files which is the reason we do not recommend it and it warns you during installation). The .msi installer should not even allow you to install without uninstalling first.

> The installation instructions need to emphasise removing older versions first

Even more than we currently do?
- The information should be available on the download page (unless you downloaded it very soon after the release)
- Both, .msi and exe installers should warn you upon install as mentioned above.

Considering that information: Where would you suggest we add that kind of information? Do you have suggestion on wording?

[David Pearce (halzia)]

0.92.0 was installed with a 64 bit .exe installer
0.92.2 with the 64 bit .msi

I often see installers detecting earlier versions and asking to remove them first eg Wireshark or suggesting keeping previous preferences eg VLC

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

OK, thanks for feedback David. You did the one thing we can not catch currently as described prominently in the note on the download page:

Note: exe and msi installers are equivalent but not compatible (i.e. one can not update the installation of the other). If in doubt which version to download, the exe installer is usually the right choice. Also avoid parallel installations of 32-bit and 64-bit versions. If you want to switch the type of installer or processor architecture please uninstall the previous version completely first. To run different versions in parallel use the binary distributions packaged as 7z archive and make sure to extract into different folders.

Improving the installer is a solution but it's not straightforward to make .msi and .exe installers aware of each other and would use a lot of time that is likely spent better in improving the actual software at this time... (I hope people actually care to read such notes. It's possible it was not present when you initially downloaded the release as there were some initial glitches due to a last-minute switch of the way we offer releases on the website).

[Jeroen de Neef (jeroen52)]

I'm having the same issue on my computer.

Windows 7, 64-bit.

The installer was https://media.inkscape.org/dl/resources/file/inkscape-0.92.2-x64.msi

Version 0.92.1 does work. https://media.inkscape.org/dl/resources/file/Inkscape-0.92.1-x64.msi

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

Hi Jeroen,

as described above this is the result of an old DLL being leftover from a previous installation.

Please fully uninstall Inkscape (also check the installation directory in case some files can not be uninstalled for whatever reason). Then re-install the latest version.

As you write you used the 64-bit MSI installer for both, 0.92.1 and 0.92.2 I'm wondering:
Weren't You asked to uninstall the previous version first? Usually the MSI installer does not even allow to install a newer version without (manually) uninstalling the previous version first).

[Pedro Lino (pedro.lino)]

I just run into the same problem: Windows 7 x64, updating from 0.92.1 x64 (exe installer) to 0.92.2 x64 (msi installer)
Launching Inkscape displays an error message (see attached image). Clicking on Ok closes the program (there is no crash).

Answering your question: no the msi installer does not recognize the previous install and that explains why zlib1.dll is not replaced.

In fact this causes a double entry in Windows Control Panel's Uninstall/Modify Program list.

I would say this is not really a bug since updating exe with exe and msi with msi does show up the uninstall question.

A solution to avoid the mixed installer problem is what Microsoft does with Skype: the installer version is slightly different (e.g. 7.34.0.101.exe vs 7.34.0.102.msi). This allows to detect that a different installer is used and issue a warning.

Hope this helps!

[username132 (sean-van-der-smythe)]

I also had this problem using the MSI installer. I suggest that the installer automatically uninstalls the old installation first (after asking for confirmation). I'm sure there are other software packages which do this.

[c.thalet (c.thalet)]

I just also had the same problem.
The previous version 0.48.4-1 uninstaller left over these files:

C:\Program Files\Inkscape\bzip2.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\freetype6.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\iconv.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\intl.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libgthread-2.0-0.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libjpeg-7.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\liblcms-1.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libMagick++-3.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libMagickCore-3.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libMagickWand-3.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libopenjpeg-2.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libpng12-0.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libpng14-14.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libpoppler-5.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libpoppler-glib-4.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libtiff-3.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libwpd-0.9.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libwpd-stream-0.9.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libwpg-0.2.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libxml2.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\libxslt.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\mingwm10.dll
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\pthreadGC2.dll

C:\Program Files\Inkscape\lib\gtk-2.0
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\lib\gtk-2.0\2.10.0
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\lib\gtk-2.0\2.10.0\engines

I had to manually delete them to make Inkscape 0.92.2 run properly.

[Qantas94Heavy (qantas94heavy)]

Closing because this is an issue with an old (un)installer and is no longer relevant for current releases of Inkscape.

Closed by: https://gitlab.com/Qantas94Heavy