Softimage (formerly known as XSI) depends on VBScript. If there is a problem with VBScript on your system, Softimage just won’t start. Typically, you won’t see anything when you try to start XSI.exe, or you may see the splash screen just before XSI crashes. I see a couple of these cases each year.

Here’s a quick way to check whether VBScript is working on your system:

1. Click Start > All Programs > Softimage Products > SOFTIMAGE XSI 7.01 > Command Prompt.
2. In the command prompt, run this command notepad hello.vbs.
3. Click Yes to create the file.
4. In Notepad, type this: LogMessage “hello”
5. Click File > Save.
6. In the command prompt, run this command: xsi -script hello.vbs
7. If VBScript is not registered properly on your system, you’ll get the error

   ‘ FATAL : The VBScript engine is not installed. This application requires VBScript to run.

To resolve the problem, use these steps:

• Click Start, Run and type regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\vbscript.dll
• If the registration was successful, you should now see the following message: DllRegisterServer in vbscript.dll succeeded.

If the above does not help, of if you receive an error message when registering vbscript.dll, then try installing Windows Script 5.6.

Another way to test VBScript, is to create a .vbs file with this code:

WScript.Echo "Hello World"

and then run it from the command-line:

cscript hello.vbs

If you get the Can’t find script engine “VBScript” for script error, then run regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\vbscript.dll.