New windows machine won't launch Chaotica by double clicking on a .chaos file. This always has worked in windows 10. When I attempt to assign .chaos files to the 2.2.2 .exe file, Windows 11 won't permit it. It always returns me to the assignment screen. The only way I can launch an existing .chaos file is to drag it to the shortcut icon for Chaotica.

It's been a week and no response from the top? This is rather critical. Microsoft declares that this is likely an update problem on your end. Please pick up the conversation and fill us all in on this? Loosing the ability to launch Chaotica with a double click on a.chaos files is a huge inconvenience.

Have you tried uninstalling the software (some of the earlier versions left a second install behind) and then rebooting to de-register the association and then reinstalling?

None of my available versions are installer type installations. They are all stand alone versions with Chaos.exe in the parent folder. I’ve never seen an installer type installation available for d/l on either of my machines.

The older W10 machine works just fine with this simple configuration. The brand new W11 machine using the identical version(s) and configurations of the software chokes as I described.

That’s why I’ve been waiting to hear back from tech support, but so far using both this place and email ---- twice has resulted in a great empty silence. That might be interpreted as a lack of resources. Certainly that shouldn’t be a reason for lack of the simple courtesy of a response.

I'm running windows 11 on mine and I've only used installer versions. Are you sure there's not something wrong with your windows install? You might try using the command "SFC /Scannow" to see if there's issues with your system files.

Download is here: https://chaoticafractals.com/download

Thanks for the link to the installer version. Still no joy, and no word from the Glare kids. System scan showed a couple anomalies, but nothing that is affecting Chaotica. I don’t know if your machine is running an upgraded version of Windows 11 from 10, but my machine is less than a month old. Fully updated OS files which are a clean install of W11. I’ve been slowly doing clean re-installs of all the old software from the previous machine and until I came to Chaotica, everything worked fine including a huge cache of old Apophisis .flame files that work just fine.

At the moment, I’m thinking that Microsoft is correct in that Chaotica hasn’t kept up to date with Windows updates. It still sees all .chaos files as “Unknown Application” even though I’ve manually attempted many times to assign them to the correct Chaotica.exe file.

The folks at Glare had no problem taking my money but don’t appear to be bothered to step up to the plate and address this situation. I shouldn’t be surprised.

I never got a response to my inquiry about how to get off the “server licensing verification” stupidity. Every time I go to the cabin in the Northwoods to have some working solitude away from internet and cell phone service, Chaotica gets throttled back to the 1024x1024 limit since it can’t access the internet license to allow me unlimited resolution on renders.

Even Adobe grants several weeks off the grid before it starts nagging to regain a connection to verify licensing. Chaotica needs to sniff up my ass every couple hours to verify a license or else they put on the brakes.

I paid $100 for this? Nice rendering engine, but Apophisis, while dated, is still a superior application.

A month and a half since I made this report/request for help and the Glare boys still haven't made the slightest attempt to contact me privately or here in the forum.

Why?

As someone who's job is to fix issues like this on a regular basis, I don't think the problem is with chaotica. I'm reasonably sure it's with windows. Windows has a history of file association issues. If you want to reach out to me on discord at some point, I'd be happy to lend my experience in troubleshooting it with you.

If you haven't noticed the Glare boys as you put it long abandoned these parts. There was word they sold it back to the original programmer who now does everything on Discord.

Thanks Pug. Microsoft is blaming it on Chaotica not being up to date. It works fine on my old W10 machine which is nearing retirement in a year or so. It's the brand new Windows 11 laptop that I use outside the studio where the problem has occurred. in over 35 years of computer use going all the way back to DOS, I've never seen this sort of persistent problem that I haven't been able to resolve.

Also, I'm also stuck with a licensing issue that won't go away. Whenever I launch C on the new machine I have to manually re-log to the server (provide p/w) to authenticate the license. This sucks because many times I'm working off-the grid in a north-woods cabin and I"m throttled down to the unlicensed max file size that is enforced in demo mode.

I would really like to get a hardware based license so this doesn't keep happening. I'm sick of having to logon just to be able to use the software.

I thought I'd already paid for that!