CRITICAL: BaseCamp 4.1.1 won't launch anymore

I believe this is caused by a faulty or missing installation of WIC (Windows Imaging Component).

Try this download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1385.

I am not sure how your system got into that state, usually WIC gets installed by default. But we've seen this a few times and usually it will work once WIC is properly installed.

We are making a change in BaseCamp 4.1.2 that will give a better error message.

I apologize for the trouble.

Thanks for the reply, but that did not help. When trying to install the WIC I get the error message:

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Setup Error
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Setup could not find the update.inf file
needed to update your system.
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OK
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I also noticed on the WIC download page that Windows 7 is not listed among the operation systems to which this update applies.

I didn't notice that this doesn't apply to Windows 7, I apologize.

However, the file and line number usually indicate a WIC issue. WIC still exists in Win 7 so you might have to try to find another source for it.

I am sorry to send you on a wild goose chase like this, but there isn't anything else I can think of. We've seen these kinds of errors before and they were usually resolved by getting WIC to work. What we do not know is how the PC can get into this state in the first place.

Well, I looked around on the Internet and could not find anything helpful. I looked in the control panel where you can install and uninstall Windows components, but nothing.

If people repeatedly have trouble with this, maybe it would be a good idea to replace the component with something else. I assume it is used only to read the JPGs that get geocoded. There should be hundreds of libraries to open JPGs.

I just tried installing MapSource instead, to get my data out of my GPS. Same problem, except that MapSource shows a graceful error message saying that WIC is missing.

This is really very strage, I have no problem with any other program on my computer.

If I understand correctly, WIC is also used to display thumbnails (e.g. of RAW photos) in Explorer. This works without any problem.

Are you aware of any other programs using WIC? I would like to test whether they work or also have problems.

IMPORTANT: After hours of research I have new information.

Please have a look at KB2670838 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2670838). Note that this update changes WIC.

As you can see it was released on 2013/2/26. I checked the Windows Update history on my computer. It was installed 2013/2/27. That coincides perfectly with the beginning of my troubles: I was still happily using BC on the 26th, on the 28th it did not work anymore.

So it seems pretty plausible that this update is the root of the problems.

I hope that with this information you will be able to fix the issues.

I just uninstalled KB2670838. I can confirm that BaseCamp and MapSource work once again.

So this is an acceptable temporary solution. Of course in the long run you will want to make BC compatible with KB2670838.

I just checked my Win 7 system and I also have KB2670838 installed on 2/27/13. So far BaseCamp and Mapsource are working as well as before. So there is more to the story. Perhaps there is some underlying hardware incompatibility with the update.

I also just checked, I have KB2670838 install on 2/26/13. Win7 64bit. BC works fine.

Thanks everyone for reporting your findings here. I don't think this update is supposed to remove WIC, so I am not sure what is going on.

For the foreseeable future we will have to keep using WIC. It is actually pretty rare that this gets messed up. BaseCamp 4.1.2 will give a similar message as MapSource does, to at least give the user an idea as to what might be going on.

Sorry for your troubles, but I am very happy you found a work-around at least.