Hi Rob,

I'm sorry to hear you are experiencing issues with your installation! This is definitely not expected behavior. Would you be able to send a screenshot of the installation screen you are stuck on? Also, have you tried restarting your machine? That may help resolve any underlying processes that could be interfering with the OpticStudio installation. Please do so if you have not already. 

Best,

Allie

I installed it as normal, i.e. without any problems. I'd try redownloading the installer.

I also experienced a normal install of 21.1 on Windows 10 Pro.

Thanks all, there wasn't anything obvious, CPU usage low disk, usage low, and the antivirus seemed OK.   I even unplugged the network and tried again to see if there was some unintended cloud transfer issue.  I just waited in the end and I'm installed now thanks - I'll see if it happens on the next update or on the other PC I have to do.

regards

Rob

Zemax 13 always took less than 1 minute to install.  OpticStudio typically takes 5-10 minutes to install.  OS 21.1 took 15 minutes to install.  Very annoying.  I was ready to kill the installation, because it too got stuck at the extraction process, at about 50% progress.  It did not seems like anything was happening, although the Windows WMI process was consuming about 10% CPU.  It finally stopped and then OS finished extracting and then installing.  This is on a i9-10900k workstation overclocked to 5 GHz with SSD drives and lots of RAM, so it does not get stressed out or slow down for anything very much.

Hi all,

Thanks for your feedback and posts here. To echo Allie, a very lengthy install time is certainly not anticipated for OpticStudio. As a way to potentially gain more insight, would those with issues be able to share diagnostics information on your machine with us by creating a case or emailing support@zemax.com? There is a chance that having insight on machine specifications, installed drivers, etc., would illuminate potential issues for the lengthy install. It might be tough to identify the root cause, but it could be worth us taking a look. You can create diagnostics packages in OpticStudio via the Help tab...Zemax File Collector:

~ Angel

Just out of curiosity, I reinstalled 21.1 and timed it at 13 minutes. That is quite a long time. My machine has an SSD drive too.

It's a 1.4 GB download and it created 3.25 GB inside Program Files and 0.5 GB in Program Data, so it is a pretty big install, and now we have things like ACIS CAD engines and .NET compatibility in the code it's no surprise that it is larger and takes longer to install. It's pretty consistent with engineering software like SolidWorks and with music production software like Cubase or video editing software like DaVinci Resolve.

The only thing I can suggest is that you (Zemax) consider a patching installer for existing installations that can do a complete install if required but that can also just update from one version to another by only downloading the things that have changed. I know Ken hated that idea and always wanted to keep things simple so always made each installer a clean installer. That was fine for those days, but maybe now a new strategy for the installer is needed. 

Mind you, back in the day Zemax came on two floppies plus three floppies that updated Windows 3.1 with the 32-bit libraries. Installation took about five minutes, but it took a week for delivery via the post so maybe the glass is half-full after all.

Just a thought. I know you guys have many fish to fry :-)