pownce alpha client blowing up on winxp
So I got a Pownce invite in my email this morning. I signed up, created an account, mucked around a little bit to see how it worked, and of course, downloaded the desktop client. I hate Twitter, so I wasn’t planning on sitting around using the web interface to Pownce either. I already run MSN Messenger, and running yet another IM-style client is a pain, but it’s still better than refreshing a browser window all day long. I’d rather just have it sit in my system tray and remain logged in while I’m online.
Anyhow, I installed the Adobe AIR-based desktop client, appropriately designated Pownce Alpha 2. Well, I couldn’t even get past the sign-on screen. Why? Because I get a Windows XP memory reference error every time I load it, without fail, after about five seconds of sitting at the login screen.
Now, my machine is pretty decent, even though I’m not on Vista (by choice… I’m waiting for the first service pack to be released, as usual.) It’s an Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 with 2GB of RAM, an nVidia 7900GS video card, a relatively new hard drive, and really very little of consequence installed aside from development tools, an imaging suite, productivity apps, and a couple of games.
After hopping onto the Pownce site and looking at their downloads section for a help area, I found their unimpressive troubleshooting section. It consists of two unhelpful FAQ-style answers, followed by an “email bug report” link. So I submitted a bug report. Sigh.
Either way, I’m what I’d consider a technology early-adopter and I’d love to play with Pownce, specifically the desktop client. This is very frustrating — anyone else having these problems?
UPDATE 3:17PM:
Well, I managed to get it working on my laptop. I also checked my desktop’s system logs and couldn’t find any error messages from either the AIR runtime or from the Pownce client itself. Not sure where AIR logs errors (if anywhere)… anyhow, you can’t add friends from the Pownce client interface? What gives? :p
Have the same Problem here with windows xp. Thought it depends on some apps i’ve installed, but no way :/
Have found the solution for the crash. Seems that ATI Drivers (if you have one) have problems with transparency and AIR.
Here’s a workaround: http://haeggalog.blogspot.com/2007/07/pownce-windows-client_09.html
Hey Patrick - thanks for the heads up. I made that change and Pownce loads fine. The problem is that I’m running NVidia drivers on all 3 machines and 2 of them were having problems with the transparency. At least we know what the deal was — too bad the app looks pretty bad with the transparency turned off. :/
Looks like other people are having this problem with other AIR-based apps, if you check out this thread over on Adobe’s site.
Hi Nick,
hm strange… i’ve thought the problem appears only to ati cards. 5 people around me using the client with Nvidia Cards and all just runs fine..
I’ve found the thread over google before i found your blog :) But adobe takes to long to handel in my opionion :/
Is the pownce Client running fine? I’ve get an error (with transparency off) and it only displays messages. If i want to write one, i can’t select the group for it
I wonder how many of you have Microsoft IntelliPoint installed?
@Gary:
Is this the Point? I try to deinstall IntelliPoint and test the client.
Amazing - deinstalled intellipoint and it works fine. Thanks for the hint.
If you knew what I went through to discover it was Intellipoint … well, it wasn’t fun.
Glad we have a decent temporary solution until Adobe can patch it to play properly with Intellipoint. Disabling AIR transparency does work as well, either way.
To be honest, Pownce’s desktop version is a nice looking AIR app, but it doesn’t have enough functionality to actually replace the web-based front-end. I don’t think I’ll be using it until I can at least add friends or reply to posts with it.
[...] If you’re like me, then you haven’t been able to use the Pownce desktop application because it throws an error within seconds of running it. And it looks like I am not alone. Well, no longer. [...]
FWIW, the latest AIR runtime seems to fix the transparency issues with the Pownce client. Yay!