gnucash quits without diagnostics on Windows XP

[Vass Dude]

Hello everyone,

I just found gnucash, it looks very promising and I am eager to try it
out.  Thanks to everyone who has contributed.

But it wouldn't start (see below) and (a) it produces no warning
messages, giving me no clue as to what's happening, and (b) I don't
see any Windows installation instructions, neither on the project web
nor in the distribution.  This really doesn't offer me any directions
to get gnucash to work.  Any hints?

Here are the details:

- I am on Windows XP, so I downloaded gnucash-2.2.4-setup.exe and ran
it, it all went fine.

- I click on the "gnucash" icon (the one that runs c:/Program
Files/gnucash/bin/gnucash.bat, as you'd expect).

- Two windows open up, one with the "tip of othe day", the other for
the gnucash itself.  The latter window says "loading [this, that,
...]".

- After ~3 seconds both windows disappear.  No "good bye", no
messages, no nothing.  Not even enough time to see what it's doing.

- I tried opening the DOS promp and pasting all lines from the .bat
file into the prompt, except using "gnucash-bin" instead of "start
gnucash-bin".  Still, the same behavior, and no diagnostic messages in
the DOS window either.

- (I noticed that I got .gnucash and a few other dot directories
created in my %HOME% directory.)

I would appreciate any resolutions to this, or any pointers thereto.

Thank you,
Vass