"Compilation failed" running "exiftool.exe"

[johnrellis]

My Lightroom plugin installs "exiftool.exe" (currently 12.08) in a plugin folder and executes it from that folder by a fully qualified path. I've got a non-technical customer for whom "exiftool.exe" is failing in a weird way:



Isn't the ActiveState packager supposed to encapsulate all dependencies and not interact with C:\Perl if it's installed? 

The customer is non-technical and has no idea why C:\Perl is installed and what installed apps or services might depend on it.  I tried installing the most recent ActiveState (C:\Perl64) on my computer and of course couldn't reproduce the problem.  I'm assuming C:\Perl is an old 32-bit installation?

Any thoughts about how I might troubleshoot this / workaround it? The customer is remote and I've already taxed his willingness to help troubleshoot for a $9.95 product.  This is the first report I've had of this, in thousands of installations over the years.

[Phil Harvey]

This may happen if ExifTool is interrupted during the self-extraction the first time it is run.  To fix this, delete the temporary files (see note c here).

- Phil

Edit: My answer is based on your topic title.  I can't see the image you tried to post

[johnrellis]

Thanks very much, I'll work with the customer on that.

[johnrellis]

Interesting that I can see the included image.  I've attached it.

[johnrellis]

Deleting the temp files solved the problem, thanks.  For reference by anyone else encountering this, here's the command line I gave to the customer to copy and paste:

for /D %d in (%TEMP%\par-*) do rmdir /s /q %d

(That's easier and more reliable than trying to explain to a non-technical person how to use Explorer to find a hidden Appdata folder and delete particular entries.)

[Phil Harvey]

Glad that worked.  Thanks for the command, I may add that to the documentation.

- Phil