Imatest - Troubleshooting

Installation problems Runtime problems DOS window

Version

Be sure you have the current version. It may contain fixes for bugs from earlier versions.

The version number appears in the bar at the top of the Imatest main window. If it's not the same as the latest version in the Change Log, you should download, install, and run the latest version.

To run Imatest in Windows Vista,
you'll need version 2.3.3 or later.

Installation

Update installations do not normally require an uninstall of the previous version, but if you encounter difficulties you may want to uninstall and reinstall Imatest. The Uninstaller is accessable from the Start menu (Start, All programs, Imatest, Uninstall) or from the Add or Remove Programs function of the Control Panel. It gives you the option of keeping or removing the Matlab runtime library archive, Imatest-lib.exe. (Keep is the default; you have to check the box to remove it.) Keeping it speeds up reinstallation. Remove it only if you don't plan to reinstall Imatest or if you have good reason to suspect it may be corrupted (a rare occurrence). Click here for full installation instructions.

Problems during installation

Installation or registration can fail if

You don't have administrator priveleges on your computer.
Your computer is behind a strong corporate firewall.

This message sometimes appears in systems that have strong firewalls. It can usually be corrected by making sure the Matlab runtime library, Imatest-lib.exe, available from the Download page, is in the same folder as the Imatest installation file. You may need to temporarily disable your firewall and manually download the library file.

If you have receive an indication of a "DNS error" (very rare), try clicking Start, Run... Enter ipconfig /flushdns in the Open... box, then click OK.

Problems following installation

The most common installation problem is a failure of the Matlab runtime library, Imatest-lib.exe, to download or install properly. This results in an error message of the form,

"The procedure entry point ... could not be located in the dynamic link library ... .dll."

If you get such a message, check to see if file Imatest-lib.exe has been downloaded correctly. Also, check the status of your firewall. Firewalls have caused this problem.

If it was downloaded automatically (during installation) there should be a copy in the Imatest installation folder (C:\Program files\Imatest in English language installations).
If you downloaded it manually (usually required in systems with firewalls), there should be a copy in the same folder as the Imatest installer program, Imatest-x.x.exe.

Windows XP Explorer reports its size as 8,513 kB, but the tooltip that appears when you move the cursor over the file name reports its size as 8.31 MB (go figure). If the download failed, a smaller size may be reported.

If you fail to find Imatest-lib.exe or if you suspect that it was downloaded incorrectly, download it by right-clicking here or on any of the links in this section, then reinstall Imatest. Imatest-lib.exe is a self extracting zip file that places the Matlab runtime library in subfolders bin\win32 and toolbox\matlab of the Imatest installation folder. If problems persist, check to see that these folders are populated, then send e-mail to Imatest support with the text of the error message, if any, that appears in the DOS window.

Runtime errors

If Imatest does not run as expected, the DOS window that normally stays minimized may contain helpful information. You can open it by clicking on the Imatest DOS Window icon in the taskbar. Here are some potential problems.

An Imatest run may fail if the image file path name contains non-Latin characters. We have seen such a failure with Chinese characters. The error message was
The error message caught was : Invalid file identifier.

If you cannot solve the problem, send an e-mail to Imatest support.

Tell us your operating system.
Attach imatest.ini, which may contain helpful information for diagnosing the problem. You can view the contents of imatest.ini (or multicharts.ini or rescharts.ini) by clicking on Settings, View settings (ini file) in the Imatest, Multicharts, or Rescharts windows. You can copy the contents from Notepad and paste them into your e-mail. The ini files are located in %AppData%\Imatest, where %AppData% is a DOS environment variable whose file name can be determined by entering the command, dir "%AppData%" in a DOS window.
- In installations prior to Imatest 2.3 (the first release compatible with Windows Vista), the full file name was C:\Program files\Imatest\imatest.ini. (or counterparts in non-English installations, for example, C:\Programme\Imatest\imatest.ini in Deutsch.) When a version of Imatest prior to 2.3 is replaced with a newer version the file is automatically copied to the new location. Problems may occur when the %AppData% folder name contains non-Latin characters. (We are looking into this. The best solution may be to delete the old imatest.ini or move it manually.)
Send the text of the error message, if any, that appears in the DOS window. (See the box below for instructions on getting a screen dump from the DOS window.)
In the Imatest main window, click on Settings (in the toolbar), Default settings. This deletes imatest.ini and creates a new version with default values. It sometimes fixes the problem, but do this with care: your settings will be lost.

The DOS window
Imatest runs from a DOS window that normally stays minimized. When a run terminates unexpectedly or just stalls, the DOS window may contain useful debugging information. To get the DOS window contents,

Click on the Imatest icon in the taskbar (usually at the bottom of the screen) to bring up the DOS window.

Procedure 1: Copy and paste text (simple, but a little tricky)

Right-click inside the DOS window, then click on Select All in the context menu.
Alternately, you can click on the icon on the upper-left of the window, click on Edit, click on Mark, then drag the cursor to select the text to copy.
Press Enter (or Return) on the keyboard. This is equivalent to Ctrl-C (Copy) in Windows (which doesn't work in the DOS window).
Paste the text into your e-mail using a standard Windows Paste command (Ctrl-V or Edit, Paste).
It's OK to delete obviously irrelevant text before you send the e-mail.

Procedure 2: Copy and paste screen dump image (complex but reliable)

Click Alt-PrtSc or Alt-PrintScreen, depending on the keyboard.
Paste the image (from the clipboard) into an image editor. In most image editors (for example, IrfanView, a great free utility ), click Edit, Paste.
Save the image as a GIF or PNG file (much smaller than TIFF or BMP and clearer than JPEG).
Attach the file to the e-mail (or include it inline).

For Imatest errors that shut down the DOS window (this has become rare),

Run Imatest from the Imatest folder (C:\Program files\Imatest in English installations) by double-clicking Diagnostics (or diagnostics.bat). This keeps the DOS window open after Imatest terminates so you can view the error message.
E-mail the error message to Imatest support. Tell us your Imatest version and operating system.

Path conflicts when other versions of Matlab are installed

If a different version of Matlab from the one used for Imatest (6.5.1) has been installed on your system, there is a tiny chance that you may experience a path conflict that causes an error message similar to the message shown on the right— or Imatest may simply fail to run. This rarely happens because the batch file that initiates Imatest sets the path. Path issues and solutions are discussed in API/EXE instructions.

X The procedure entry point svDoubleSclarRemW could not be
located in the dynamic link library libmwservices.dll

Bugs and all that

The following message appears several times in the DOS window when you try to save data.

Function 'get_param' is not implemented in standalone mode.

This has no effect on the saved images, and it's rarely visible since the DOS window remains in the background. Matlab has described the problem, to be fixed in a future release, here.

The Open files dialog box in some modules cannot be resized. This is a bug in Matlab Release 13. (However SFR has a new Open files dialog box that can be resized. And multiple files can be selected.)

Troubleshooting

What to do when Imatest doesn't work