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Tutorials and Examples

CRYSFIRE Powder Indexing System for DOS/Windows by Robin Shirley et al

How to Obtain and install Crysfire

The CCP14 Homepage is at http://www.ccp14.ac.uk
[Tutorials page] | [CRYSFIRE Tutorial Index] | [Crysfire What's New] | [LMGP Suite Chekcell Index] | [Powder Diffraction Indexing Resources]

Crysfire 2020 Now available for Windows (XP to Windows10), Linux, and Macintosh OS X

For description and downloads see Crysfire2020

Crysfire 2004 for DOS available. Installation instructions below.
  • Grab latest version  crys2004.zip 
  • Older cryinst.zip still available
If updating an old version of crysfire, backup the old version by renaming the c:\crysfire directory to c:\crysfire.old, before installing the new version.

Installing Crysfire on Windows XP


Installing CRYSFIRE 2004 under windows XP

  • Download distribution file "crysinst.zip"

  • Unzip into a directory of your choice. It can be C:\CRYSFIRE, but it need not be, e.g. E:\programs\CRYSFIRE would be just as good. However, avoid long (> 8 character) directory names and ones with spaces or other special characters.

  • Edit file CF_HOME.BAT so that the environment variable points to the directory containing the suite of programs, e.g.set _CFhome=E:\Programs\CRYSFIRE following the example above.

  • Create a desktop icon as follows: right mouse click on desktop and choose "New" -> "Shortcut". Using the browse feature, locate the file CRYSFIRE.BAT in the directory containg the program suite. Continue to the then the next page and name the shortcut simply CRYSFIRE. Finally right mouse click on the icon and choose "Properties". On the "Shortcut" tab, choose "Change Icon" (and ignore any warning about no icons). Browse for the icon in the CRYSFIRE directory - the file is called "crysfire.ico".

  • Finally, launch program by clicking on icon.

Note: ignore instructions about editing AUTOEXEC.BAT files, etc. as this is not required with XP.

Warning: Crysfire 2002 now installs differently than previous versions of Crysfire. Information on this follows.

  • If updating an old version of crys, backup the old version by renaming the c:\crysfire directory to c:\crysfire.old, before installing the new version.

  • Grab the cryinst.zip and use your favourite unzipping program to install Crysfire into the c:\crysfire subdirectory of your hard-disk system.

Installing Crysfire on all versions of Windows except WinXP

Assuming you have extracted crysfire into the c:\crysfire subdirectory (if not, then review the official installation file), then open up a DOS windows and go into the c:\crysfire directory.

Run cfsetup (cfsetup.bat is the file you are running)

Done. (this installs a crysfire script in the c:\windows directory. C:\windows should already be in the directory search path)

Installing Crysfire on Windows XP

As Win XP protects the c:\windows directory, the standard Crysfire install procedure does not work. Thus do the following:

  • Run sysedit and edit the c:\autoexec.bat file and put C:\CRYSFIRE into the PATH statement and reboot the computer.

    e.g.,
    PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND

    to:
    PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;c:\crysfire

    (don't forget the ";" )

    Or add the line (after the path command)

    SET PATH=%path%;c:\crysfire

NOTE: A graphical program for MS-Windows that links into CRYSFIRE to help check trial cells and determine spacegroups is the Chekcell software - part of the LMGP suite for Windows by Jean Laugier and Bernard Bochu.

If CRYSFIRE Does not work?

A possible problem can be like the following: 
According to the tutorial, as soon as I quit, the 
program should launch (in my case) TREOR. Instead, I get
the following message:

stop in line 44560 of module crys926 at address 0D0F:E8AA

The program then terminated with the message:

out of environment space
The Solution for this: 
In the C:\config.sys - put the following:

SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS\ /E:1024 /P
(or with Win95 SHELL=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS\ /E:1024 /P

Also make sure you DO NOT HAVE VALUES less than this:
FILES=25
BUFFERS=30

Then reboot the computer. Things should work then.

If CRYSFIRE Does not work under Windows 98/Win98?

From: "Barwood, Henry" [[email protected]]
To: "'[email protected]'" 
Subject: RE: CRYS2RUN
Date sent: Wed, 30 Jul 1999 10:02:39 -0500
Dear Robin,
Thanks for responding. I remembered after I e-mailed you that in W98 the DOS
functions are disabled EXCEPT from the DOS window. I was attempting to run
from the Desktop using a shortcut, but this will not support any DOS commands
(true 32 bit, etc.....a Bill Gates "gotcha!"). I killed everything except
DOS and the program runs fine. "Uncle Bill" has made it so that if you run
any DOS programs, by golly, you aren't going to do it under Windows! Henry
...........................
Date sent: Tue, 28 Jul 1999 09:41:21 -0500
From: Henry Barwood [[email protected]]
Organization: Indiana Geological Survey
To: [email protected]
Subject: CRYS2RUN
Dear Dr. Shirley,
I've run the program crys2run using my old 486 computer under W95, but I
recently upgraded to a newer machine and W98. Now I find I cannot get
crys2run to function. I've edited my batch files and added the path command
as I did before, but when I load a dataset and start the run it simply
crashes the program before any data is sent to Ito, Dicvol or Treor. I
don't even get an error message in the DOS window. Can you help me out with
this problem. Thanks.
Henry Barwood
Indiana Geological Survey

Old information relevent to 9.27 release of CRYSFIRE.

  • 19th October 1998 
    ITO, TREOR and DICVOL executables were somehow lacking in the October 13th 1998 
    distribution kit - please download again if affected. Should now be fixed and 
    working properly. This problem would not be noticeable if you were upgrading CRYSFIRE. 
    Thanks to Dave Brauer for pointing this out.
  • 13th October 1998. 
    There was a problem with the previous version of the Crys 
    Powder Indexing suite for DOS in passing the self calibration
    zero offset value to the ITO, TREOR and DICVOL control files.

    Modifications have also been done to the control files to
    handle increased significant figures for peak position.
    The latest version can be downloaded via: 
     http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/tutorial/crys/index.html

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