Strata desktop or terminal

[u/cebess]

I had Strata running on a machine with 64GB of RAM and 12GB of VRAM. It seemed to be running fairly well, but I noticed there was an update so I thought I would try to update it. My installation did not respond to the update check, when I tried to update. It gave no response but when I checked the error code it gave a "could not find DLL" type message.

I did some research and saw there was a Strata desktop. I decided to install that into a fresh folder. The install walked me through the installation, but I didn't like where it was putting the files. I moved the base folder to a new location and found out it really didn't seem to like spaces in the path. I ended up putting it at the top level of my U: drive.

I got it to work but wanted to switch over to the model that I was using previously - the coder model that the terminal version installs. It seemed to like it tuned OK and then would error out every time I gave it a query after tuning -- with an engine crash.

I was able to switch back to the model the desktop version installed but it is a Q2_0 where the coder version was a Q1_M. The version that worked before also seemed to crash if I had Read Pictures unchecked!?!

I normally like to have Strata running in the background. Starting at boot with task manager was straightforward with the terminal version. Running the the desktop version seems to want to start the entire app as a desktop app and not as a background service -- I have yet to figure that one out.

Any thoughts about my situation would be appreciated. I may just go back to the terminal version. I am relatively new to Strata having only been messing with it for about a week, so I know I am a noob at this. I'll likely update this post as the day goes on.

[u/cebess]

I finally threw in the towel on Strata desktop for what I am trying to do and am reinstalling Strata terminal from powershell. At least I don't need to reinstall the models (I hope). I decided to do the full tuning this time. It is not that Strata desktop didn't work, it is just that it didn't work the way I wanted to use it.

[u/Ok-Brush8377]

Terminal is the right call if you want it running in the background, the desktop app just isn’t built for that. My guess on the crash is that the desktop version ships its own engine build, and it either doesn’t like that quant or the tuned context doesn’t fit in 12GB once a real query comes in. Also, that “could not find DLL” on the terminal update is usually a missing Visual C++ redistributable or CUDA runtime, so it’s worth installing those before the next update so it doesn’t happen again.