Vertex (or other Perple_X programs) terminates without doing anything. What am I doing wrong? Or Vertex writes error messages but they scroll off the screen before I can read them. This question is invariably asked by Windows users who are running Perple_X programs by double-clicking the program icons. The problem with running Perple_X this way is that the console to which error messages are written is closed immediately the program executes making it impossible for the user to read the error messages. To avoid this problem, Perple_X programs should be run from a Console (i.e., the Windows cmd.exe program), e.g., to run Vertex in the directory C:\jamie\Berple_X, start the console as in: Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. C:\>cd \jamie\Berple_X C:\jamie\Berple_X>vertex ... If you use Perple_X often it is useful to create a desktop shortcut to cmd.exe customized for Perple_X, to do this create the shortcut then modify its properties as follows: 1) Under "Shortcut" change the "Start in:" target to your Perple_X directory, e.g., C:\jamie\Berple_X 2) Under "Layout" change the "Screen buffer size" parameters "width" and "height" to 150 and 3000, the former will let you read long output lines, whereas the latter will allow you to scroll back to read 3000 lines of output. 3) Under "Options" enable "Quick Edit" and "Insert" mode if you want to copy and paste text to or from the console. see also www.perplex.ethz.ch/faq/Increase_page_file_size_in_windows.txt