PuTTY bug xp-wont-run

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PuTTY 0.58 utterly fails to run on some (but not all) versions of Windows XP, with the following error message:

The application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

or (in German):

Diese Anwendung konnte nicht gestartet werden, weil die Anwenungskonfiguration nicht korrekt ist. Zur Problembehebung sollten Sie die Anwendung neu installieren.

or (in Dutch):

De toepassing kan niet worden gestart omdat de configuratie van de toepassing onjuist is. Het opnieuw installeren van de toepassing kan die probleem oplossen.

(Reinstalling PuTTY does not fix the problem.)

As far as we can tell, this problem only affects Windows XP systems that don't have Service Pack 2 installed. In particular, we've had reports that installing SP2 solves the problem.

This is due to a trim I (JTN) made to the application manifests; the trimmed version conformed to Microsoft's specifications, and we tested it on one XP install (SP1), but it seems not all XP installs are born equal in this regard.

It affects only the graphical utilities (PuTTY, PuTTYtel, PuTTYgen, and Pageant).

If you run into this, please try one of the workarounds below, which have worked for everyone so far. If that doesn't work for you, please tell us, or it will likely continue to be broken.

• A separate manifest file. If you download the following files, rename them as indicated, and put them in the same directory as the relevant 0.58 executable, they should override the application manifests and allow them to run.
  (Note that this is only a temporary workaround; faffing with extra files will not be required in the long term.)
  • putty.mft: rename to putty.exe.manifest (or puttytel.exe.manifest)
  • puttygen.mft: rename to puttygen.exe.manifest
  • pageant.mft: rename to pageant.exe.manifest
• A development snapshot with updated application manifests. (Although note that we're likely to do destabilising things to the snapshots soon, so this may not be a good long-term solution, depending on what state they're in.)
• A previous version of PuTTY, if you don't need the new features and bugfixes in 0.58. (Note that all releases before 0.57 have known security problems, so if you're going to do this you should use 0.57.)

Audit trail for this bug.