When I add a Splash Screen using Launch4j, I get a Startup Error ("An error occurred while starting the application")

Question

I noticed that Launch4j's GUI seems to prefer a bmp file, so I used Gimp to convert my jpg file into that format, but I kept getting the error when trying to run the executable generated by Launch4j.

Dutiable

Hmm... Maybe an error message, stack trace or anything that can help us guess what is wrong? – Thagard

Sorry, the error I would get was Launch4j's "Startup error", which is a customizable message. The default message I was getting was "An error occurred while starting the application". – Dutiable

It can also happen if one adds a splash screen to a server application (which does not open a window) and keeps the default setting: [v] Signal error on timeout. – Cimabue

Answer 1

I was on the right track by converting my jpg file into a bmp file. The Launch4j GUI allows you to choose any file for the Splash file, but it requires a 24-bit bmp file.

Initially, when I converted my file with Gimp, I converted it into a 32-bit bmp file. This was the cause of my problem. I reconverted the image using Gimp's default value of 24-bits and now the executable that Launch4j creates will run without an error.

Dutiable

(as a note, it looks like the key here is, within gimp, after hitting export there is a little expand-button for "compatibility options" and you need to make sure that "Do not write color space information" is checked...exporting from seemingly anything else (ffmpeg, imagemagick) didn't work for me, only gimp with this compatibility option set. Odd. Another workaround is to go to jre tab -> jvm options and add "-splash:file/path/here.png" to it... – Fabricant

Answer 2

Make sure the following options are selected when exporting the BMP in GIMP:

Koh