MarvinSketch 5.11.0 will not open in Windows 7 64 Enterprise

I have installed JChem with MarvinBeans on Windows 7 64-bit Enterprise. MarvinSpace opens, but MarvinSketch does not. I get an error, "Error reading template set location: marvin.mytemplates". I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling different versions of JChem and I have tried installing MarvinBeans separately, but nothing works. I have 64-bit Java installed; I checked this by entering "java -version" at the command prompt, and I get "java version 1.6.0_24, Java (TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_24-b07) Java HotSpot (TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 19.1-b02, mixed mode). I have attached a zip archive of the stack trace. Thank you for any help you can provide.

We have seen issues like this before, as a workaround I can suggest to create %USER_HOME%\chemaxon\marvin.mytemplates file that contains the following text:

<?xml version="1.0"?><cml version="ChemAxon file format v5.10.0, generated by vunknown">
</cml>

I am not sure if it solves the problem, because I could not reproduce it on my environment, so I will have to install a 64-bit Java to test this accurately.

Please inform me if the creation of the file solves the issue, then I will have a better starting point for debugging.

Thanks, and best regards,
István

I tried inserting the file as worded and it did not work. I also tried using the wording of the same file that exists in the Mac version:

<?xml version="1.0"?><cml version="ChemAxon file format v5.10.0, generated by v5.11.0">

</cml>

But this also did not work.

 

I also tried installing the +jre version of JChem (with Marvin) in my home directory in Windows, as is done in the linux version (which works just fine). However, again MarvinSketch would not open in Windows.

Hi,

sorry for the very late reply, but I still not were able to reproduce the issue, and stucked in reviewing all aspects of the relevant code, and beside my other tasks it was hard to do progress on this, but it seems I have a result.

Finally it turned out that the problem lies deep under the hood of system property handling in java and Windows 7 Enterprise specialities. It seems java can not handle environment variables in path declarations, and use the path values defined in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders registry key. These keys (at least I find that on the internet) contains %userprofile% evironment variables on Win 7 Enterprise, my Win 7 Professional contains the full path instead of this variable.

After I have found this, we can workaround the issue in our code, until that I can suggest the following workaround: set the CHEMAXON_HOME environment variable and point it to the %USERHOME%\chemaxon folder.

I will inform you when the workaround is ready and released.

The related java bug: http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=4787931

Regards,
Istvan