My brother is trying to get Solidworks 2010 running on his Windows 7 laptop. I presume it is the Educator's version - since it has been provided to him by his school.

It installed ok. And we initially ran it without problems - using Windows XP compatibility mode.

Subsequent attempts to start the program failed however.

We are now getting a "side-by-side configuration" error:

this application failed to start because  side-by-side-configuration is incorrect.

I have tried some suggestions, such as replacing corrupted files by using the 'sfc' command.

sfc /scannow

It doesn't seem to have worked. I am still getting the error quoted above.

My understanding was that Solidworks 2010 should run without problem on Windows 7 (the student/educators version as well as the full). It's a 64-bit laptop - would that be an issue? I have tried various compatibility modes - as well as running it in plain (non-compatibility) mode.

Any suggestions welcome.