R help - Mar 2018 - R 3.4.4, internet access fails on Windows XP

I can install and run R 3.4.4 on Windows XP (32bit). However, calling
"Update Packages..." or "Html help" from the RGui.exe main
menu fails with a Windows MessageBox saying:

"The procedure entry point IdnToAscii could not be located in the dynamic
link library KERNEL32.dll"

and the following text printed to the RGui console window:

"...
In addition: Warning message:
In download.file(url, destfile = f, quiet = TRUE) :
  unable to load shared object 'C:/R/R-3.4.4/modules/i386/internet.dll':
  LoadLibrary failure:  The specified procedure could not be found."

"IdnToAscii" is exported from
"C:\WINDOWS\system32\normaliz.dll" on Windows XP. But apparently RGui
cannot locate this procedure on Windows XP.

Any advice? (except for "switch to a more recent windows version")

Thanks a lot,
--Holger

On 21/03/2018 8:27 AM, Holger Taschenberger wrote:
> I can install and run R 3.4.4 on Windows XP (32bit). However, calling
"Update Packages..." or "Html help" from the RGui.exe main
menu fails with a Windows MessageBox saying:
> 
> "The procedure entry point IdnToAscii could not be located in the
dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll"
> 
> and the following text printed to the RGui console window:
> 
> "...
> In addition: Warning message:
> In download.file(url, destfile = f, quiet = TRUE) :
>    unable to load shared object
'C:/R/R-3.4.4/modules/i386/internet.dll':
>    LoadLibrary failure:  The specified procedure could not be found."
> 
> "IdnToAscii" is exported from
"C:\WINDOWS\system32\normaliz.dll" on Windows XP. But apparently RGui
cannot locate this procedure on Windows XP.
> 
> Any advice? (except for "switch to a more recent windows
version")

The Windows FAQ 2.2 says, "Windows XP is no longer supported", so I 
think you're out of luck.  XP went past "end-of-life" in 2014.

Other than switching to a more recent Windows version, your choices are 
switching to a completely different OS, or switching to an older version 
of R.

Duncan Murdoch

To solve similar problem, I just install Lubuntu 17.10 on an old PC 
(i686) and I am astonished by the reactivity of the computer... it has a 
second life.
The main problem is that Rstudio Desktop 32 bits is no more supported 
for Ubuntu 32bits computers but the solution using Rstudio Server 32 
bits works very well.
Marc


Le 21/03/2018 ? 16:58, Duncan Murdoch a ?crit?:
> On 21/03/2018 8:27 AM, Holger Taschenberger wrote:
>> I can install and run R 3.4.4 on Windows XP (32bit). However, calling 
>> "Update Packages..." or "Html help" from the
RGui.exe main menu fails
>> with a Windows MessageBox saying:
>>
>> "The procedure entry point IdnToAscii could not be located in the 
>> dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll"
>>
>> and the following text printed to the RGui console window:
>>
>> "...
>> In addition: Warning message:
>> In download.file(url, destfile = f, quiet = TRUE) :
>> ?? unable to load shared object 
>> 'C:/R/R-3.4.4/modules/i386/internet.dll':
>> ?? LoadLibrary failure:? The specified procedure could not be
found."
>>
>> "IdnToAscii" is exported from
"C:\WINDOWS\system32\normaliz.dll" on
>> Windows XP. But apparently RGui cannot locate this procedure on 
>> Windows XP.
>>
>> Any advice? (except for "switch to a more recent windows
version")
>
>
> The Windows FAQ 2.2 says, "Windows XP is no longer supported", so
I
> think you're out of luck.? XP went past "end-of-life" in
2014.
>
> Other than switching to a more recent Windows version, your choices 
> are switching to a completely different OS, or switching to an older 
> version of R.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

Dear Duncan,

        thank you for your reply.

On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 11:58:15 -0400
Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:

 
> The Windows FAQ 2.2 says, "Windows XP is no longer supported", so
I think you're out of luck.  XP went past "end-of-life" in 2014.
> 
on <https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/README.R-3.4.4> it says

"R 3.4.4 for Windows
==================
This distribution contains a binary distribution of R-3.4.4 to run on
Windows XP and later (including 64-bit versions of Windows) on ix86
and x86_64 chips."
> Other than switching to a more recent Windows version, your choices are
switching to a completely different OS, or switching to an older version of R.
R i386 runs without problems on Windows XP up to and including version 3.4.2.
Only R i386 3.4.3 & R i386 3.4.4 cannot access the internet on my Windows
XP.

I supposed this is not so much a problem with the OS (because
"IdnToAscii" exists on WindowsXP SP3 as well), but rather with the
header files and/or import libraries of the MinGW environment.

Perhaps it does not take too much effort to restore WindowsXP compatibility. The
described symptoms are at least easy to debug.

I know that WindowsXP is no longer supported by Microsoft. However, I work in an
academic environment and we are stuck to Windows XP on some computers because
some of our data acquisition devices are only properly supported on that OS.

Regardless of your conclusion, I'm thankful to the R developer team to make
the R software freely available to the scientific community.

With kind regards,
        Holger