Paratext 8 is not starting: solution(s) found

Question

I have received a messages from 2 different translators recently that said they couldn’t open Paratext on one of their machines, and both were able to find a solution, so I wanted to report their solutions in case it helps anybody else.

The first received this error message (as part of a longer error message) on a Windows 7 Pro machine: “Could not load file or assembly ‘System . Service Model. Version=4.0.0.0. Culture=neutral. PublicKey Token=b77a5c561934e089’ or one of its dependencies. The module was expected to contain an assembly manifest.”

He said that this was fixed by running Windows Update.

The second said that the Splash Screen appear and went away, but Paratext never opened. If he tried to open Paratext again, Windows said it was already running. This was on a recently updated Windows 10 machine.

The problem turned out to be that Avast Free antivirus was blocking Paratext from. Once he uninstalled Avast Free, Paratext opened fine. There may be a way to allow Paratext to run with Avast Free, but he’s just going to use a different antivirus program that’s provided by our IT Department.

SIL+LSS+PNG

Answer 1

I also have a solution to share for that scenario:

I have had Paratext fail to open on multiple systems. It usually appears/disappears after I double click the icon, sometimes it never appears. Often times I can fix it by setting it to “Run As” Administrator. The user is already an admin, so I am unsure why this helps.

Comments

I’m not sure why Paratext would be helped by admin access, but speaking more generally: The last several major versions of Linux and Windows (starting with Vista) have used a strategy of “elevating privileges”, so that applications generally run with ordinary permissions even if the person launching them is an administrator. If the application needs and asks for additional access, a special prompt appears:

• On Windows, the prompt is known as UAC. If you’re an admin, you just click Yes to proceed. Otherwise, you can enter an admin’s credentials.
• On Linux (at least as of a couple years ago), you have to enter an admin’s password to proceed. (If you’re using a command prompt, putting “sudo” before the command elevates its privileges. https://xkcd.com/149/)

Answer 2

Thank you for posting this. I had the very same issue. There was a major update yesterday for windows 10. The update required a restart. After restarting Paratext 8 would not come on just as you described. I’ve tried everything I could to get it to run, even reinstalled a couple of times. No luck. Read your and uninstalled avast free and it started right up. Yeah!
Clif+Olson