Installing APT on a Windows-based PC

Supported Systems

The APT tools are highly graphical and interactive applications and therefore run best on a robust machine. The APT is supported on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista. For small proposals in Phase I a 266Mhz Pentium II or equivalent and 400 Megabytes RAM (memory) should generally be sufficient, but for Phase II work we highly recommend 512 Megabytes. Please see our memory discussion for more information.

• You will need Acroread 5.0 or higher installed on your machine. To check your version, start acroread and select "About Acrobat Reader" from the Help menu.
• You should have the web browser plugin Shockwave 5.0 or higher for viewing the training movies. (In Netscape you can check your version by clicking on "About Plugins" in the Help menu.)
• Depending on your institution's computer security measures (firewalls, blocked ports, etc.), you may initially have communication trouble with APT. If you have any concerns please see our firewall webpage.

How to find out about new releases

We maintain an internal distribution list for announcing new releases of APT. This may be helpful to people who install APT for others to use. Send an e-mail to majordomo@stsci.edu which contains the line:

subscribe apt-users

1. UnInstall the previous version

Here are instructions for getting rid of the old version:

• Remove APT using the Windows Uninstaller (if it is there)
• Start>Settings>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs
• Select old APT, click on Change/Remove and follow instructions
• If some directories remain, it means that you and/or APT stored some files in the installation directory. You may want to double check that something you want (such as a proposal file from last year) is not in there.
• After you have retrieved anything you want to save, delete the folder where it was installed. (By default you will find it in the Program Files folder.)

2. Quit out of other applications (optional)

This is not required, but for some older machines there may be trouble installing if the resources of the machine are being used by other applications.

3. Download and Install

Choose your operating system: APT contains Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Because of this there is a different APT for each major platform. The installation page you enter next can choose the correct version for your machine for you (just click on the button below the words "Recommended installer for your platform"). Or just choose the Windows platform from the "Available Installers" table and follow the instructions.

A few people have had the installation page say "There is no installer available for your platform. You can download an installer for another platform from the list below." This message is misleading. If you have one of the supported platforms, download the installer for your platform from the table. You just won't be able to use the installation button which detects what platform you are on.

Get the most out of your machine's memory: During installation you will be given the option of stating how much memory your machine has.

• Choose the first option if:
• Your machine has less than 512 MB of memory
• You don't know how much memory you have (memory (RAM) can be determined by going to Start>Settings>Control Panel>System)
• You are doing a site installation and some of your users have less than 512 MB of memory
• Choose the second option if your machine has between 512 MB and 1 GB of memory.
• Choose the third option if your machine has 1 GB or more of memory.

Proceed to the Installation...

(If you are in Europe you should use the mirrored download site in Germany).

4. Troubleshooting

If the installer tells you that "errors occurred" during installation, look at the installation log which is located in: <installation dir>/APT*_InstallLog.log

You can also generate debug and sometimes that will reveal the problem.

Please contact us (through help@stsci.edu) if you have problems with installation.

Known Installation/Download Problems:

• APT fails without any pop up

If APT fails without comment when you invoke it, it could be due to installing APT on top of a previous installation without deleting the previous installation first. (This is a new problem starting with APT 16.2.)

• JavaOutOfMemory exception

If you get a JavaOutOfMemory exception during the installation, please exit out of other applications and try again.

5. Start

Once you have installed the APT you invoke it from the Start menu. For instance to start the APT go to Start menu and choose Programs>APT170>APT.

Once the program is started you will be presented with the main APT screen.

6. Help

There is a a series of short training movies which will help get you started (there are also web pages with screen shots available on the same page). APT also has documentation available from the "Help" menu (the right most menu on the menu bar).

If you can't find what you need, please contact us at help@stsci.edu.