Mars Software

I downloaded Mars notebook, extracted the portable. But it won't start.
Then proceeded to do a full install, installs fine, but Mars Notebook still won't start. It's not in the task manager or anything.

Seeing that the last development activity was in 2013, I would think it's very likely it should work on XP? Are there some additional system requirements?

It works perfectly even on Windows 10 anniversary update and for sure under Windows XP, 7 and 8, 8.1.
What Windows version do you use?
Do you have any antivirus installed? Try to disable it just to check if it helps.
Some free useless antiviruses can block Notebook.exe from running detecting some suspicious code in it used for debug and hack protection. It's false positive.
As I remember that was comodo antivirus but years ago.

Win XP.
No antivirus, but comodo firewall 3.9 (old). I exited CFW but still can't run.

Does MAPC depend on some windows service perhaps?