Hi,

first, a brief outline of my installation saga and then a suggestion......

I initially downloaded Draftsight 64 on a Windows 8.1 system and was able to install and open it - but without access to any commands through the menu bar or the toolbars (although I could access commands via the command line and could customise an empty toolbar by adding commands one by one).

The error message was: "Xml error: unexpected character, line = 1580, column = 1............"

After several attempts to uninstall and reinstall the software to address that issue, renaming  or deleting SWActivation and Dassault Systemes entries from the Registry along the way, I  was repeatedly unable  to run the program, even though I had received email confirmations that I had successfully activated it on several of the attempts.

 I suspect my scattergun strategy had something to do with this..... 

I finally achieved a successful installation by 'refreshing' the Windows operating system using the Restore facility - with no impact on other software as it is a new laptop. As I have not used this facility previously I was pleasantly surprised that it went so well.

This brings me to the suggestion that might assist others with their installations.

It would be useful for the install program to prompt users to create a 'Restore' snapshot of their system before installing Draftsight (with perhaps a link to the Restore process to help) - this would be regarded as good practice in any case by those who are less reckless than myself.

If the Draftsight installation is subsequently unsuccessful then this would enable users to 'Restore' their operating system back to its previous state - to allow another 'fresh' install without dabbling in the Registry.

 (Apologies for any terminology clangers).

Regards,

Jim Duffy