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How do I get Mathematica to startup under Windows NT?

When running under Windows NT, Mathematica® attempts to write a preference directory structure to the user's home directory, which is set up by the system administrator. When Mathematica fails to start up, it is often because Mathematica cannot determine your home directory to create or read the preferences files. Usually this happens because the home directory is set to a nonexistent drive or to a location where the user does not have read or write permissions.

To diagnose this problem, open a command prompt window and issue the command set. This will return a list of environment variables. Check to see if HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH point to sensible locations. For example, if your home directory is mounted as the directory I:\users\myname, then HOMEDRIVE should be set to I: and HOMEPATH set to \users\myname. Note that other applications may not be as strict as Mathematica when parsing these environment variables, so other applications may still work even when these variables are not set correctly.

If the HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH are not set to reasonable values, then you may want to try two possible remedies.

Using the Windows NT User Manager program, set the home directory to a meaningful location, such as C:\users\default or whatever policy your local network follows. This change can be done only by the Windows NT Administrator. A regular user does not have sufficient permission levels to make this change.

If your system administrator is unavailable, you can set the Mathematica-specific environment variable MATHEMATICA_PREFERENCES to override Mathematica's use of the home directory. For example, you can set this variable to I:\users\myname. This will place the preferences folder in the directory I:\users\myname. You can add this environment variable with the Windows NT System control panel's Environment subsection.

Also, if you are using NT 3.51, please see the following URL.

http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/nt/startup351.html

Multiple copies of the Mathematica fonts will also cause startup errors.

http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/nt/startupfonts.html

Download this FAQ as a Mathematica 5.2 Notebook

Questions or comments? Send email to support@wolfram.com.