[R] Puzzling warning using 2.3.1...

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sun, 13 Aug 2006, Brian Lunergan wrote:

> Greetings folks:
> 
> Stepped away from a win/lin dual boot system and spent the better part 
> of the past week resetting a windows only arrangement.
> 
> Before the switch I was running 2.3.1 without any strange behaviours. 
> When I reached the point of putting it back on the machine I would get 
> this puzzling warning the first time I would try to select a cran 
> mirror:
> 
>  > chooseCRANmirror()
> Warning message:
> DLL attempted to change FPU control word from 8001f to 9001f
>  >
> 
> When I pulled it off and reinstalled 2.2.1 I got no such warning.
> 
> Thoughts or suggestions? 

This is a warning about a problem with your OS, not with R.

> Could the file have been damaged or corrupted in same way? The Md5sum 
> checked out but I'm not sure how accurate an assessment that is of the 
> file's integrity. Should I just download a new

Did you run md5check?: that is very thorough.  See the rw-FAQ Q2.3.

> copy and try again with that? Not sure if it's important but I run a 
> Win98se setup.

This is covered by rw-FAQ Q2.21 (although that will not be obvious to 
you, but please read it now).

It indicates a problem with some *non-R* DLL on your machine, and not a 
problem with R itself.  R 2.3.1 looks up the latest list of mirrors online 
(and is much more aggressively protected against rogue DLLs), and 2.2.1 
did not, so my guess is that it is your winsock or other internet access 
DLLs.

R has corrected the problem for you.  Your OS have been end-of-lined by 
Microsoft long ago, but I do suggest you ensure it is as fully updated as 
possible (including Internet Explorer), assuming that using a current OS 
is out of the question.  (R support for that OS is likely to be withdrawn 
in the near future: it was somewhat unexpected that 2.3.x still worked 
on Win98 since it uses features that were said in some accounts not to 
be present.)


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595