jloach Posted March 15, 2002 Share Posted March 15, 2002 Hi! Does anyone have a blue-screen problem with XP running IC5? Two or three times a day, while rotating a few items with the tri-ball, the screen will suddenly freeze. No mouse movements or keyboard presses respond. After about 15 seconds, the system blue-screens, reporting a critical error 5, which it blames on some device in the system having a bad driver or something. No specific suggestions, except to perhaps disable caching and shadowing in CMOS. After a reboot, everything's fine again. I thought is may have been the soundcard, but it happens with that removed as well. I bet it's the video driver, but the latest has been installed. IC5 Hotfix 2 Windows XP Pro Asus A7M266-D Dual Athlon MP 1900+ Fire GL2 Soundblaster Live 5.1 Adaptec SCSI 19160 Thanks all. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 15, 2002 Share Posted March 15, 2002 John, I haven't heard of this here but have seen behavior like that before with microsoft operating systems and other products. What I have seen in the past is constant crashes when the operating system is either an upgrade from a previous OS, or is a customized OEM version of the OS. I have seen on many occasions that if either of the two previous conditions are true that reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling a full install version of the microsoft OS resolves the problems. I have seen this from Win95 all the way up to XP. Your hardware is very similar to the systems of a few other IronCAD customers that I have worked with and all of them have been successful. You may try forcing IronCAD into software only rendering through Tools/Options/Rendering (uncheck Automatic, check Software). There is a bug in 5.0 that the hotfix was supposed to resolve but perhaps not for you. The bug was basically, IronCAD would freeze. It was a result of having an image set for the background of the scene. If you are working with scenes that contain anything other than a solid color background then that might be the problem. Try changing the background from an image to a color. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 15, 2002 Author Share Posted March 15, 2002 Thanks for the tips, Chris. This is a recent install, with a newly formatted disk and a full version of XP Pro. I'd sure hate to have to start over. Painful. I'll try running for a while without some of the extraneous background utilities like McAfee and DirectCD. Between stops, IronCad is fabulous!!!! Cheers, John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 16, 2002 Author Share Posted March 16, 2002 Hi all Running fine today, with the only change being I installed the latest Microsoft Intellimouse driver from www.microsoft.com over the one that came with XP. Hopefully that's it. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 20, 2002 Author Share Posted March 20, 2002 Still had a lockup after the mouse driver update. AMD has an AGP driver update which I installed. So far so good. miniport_522_win2k.exe (AMD AGP Driver Version 5.22 for Windows 2000) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dlalonde Posted March 20, 2002 Share Posted March 20, 2002 Thanks for keeping us updated on XP. My next upgrade machine will have XP, but I'm waiting for good reports from the field. My win2k machine didn't work properly until service pack 2 was issued, so I am being patient. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 21, 2002 Author Share Posted March 21, 2002 Bummer. Just froze again. Not sure what to try next, but experimenting with this stuff sure cuts into your drafting time. And forgetting to save regularly can make for quite a bit of repeated work! The dual athlon on XP with FireGL2 runs really great, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 26, 2002 Author Share Posted March 26, 2002 I reformatted and reinstalled XP, and started with a minimal system containing only Office 2000 and Ironcad 5. Beautiful. Installed McAfee VirusScan 6 and still ran great. Then installed AutoCad Mechanical Desktop 4 in order to run AutoCad for customer compatibility. IronCad started freezing. I uninstalled AutoCad and IronCad, and reinstalled IronCad. IronCad now runs fine again. So the problem seems to be an incompatibility between MD4 (or AutoCad 2000) and IronCad. (BTW, I'm also quite incompatible with AutoCad!). IronCad and MD4 ran fine together in Windows 2K. Problems only appeared in XP. Unfortunately I do need AutoCad, so I'll probably pick up AutoCad LT 2002, so as to minimize the investment. Hopefully whatever was causing the problem has been cleared up in the later AutoCad release. Is anyone is successfully running IronCad and AutoCad LT together in XP? Thank you all for listening to this saga. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 26, 2002 Share Posted March 26, 2002 Ooh, nice find. Here's an idea that might help them run in parallel. Try copying the contents of the entire c:/program files/innovationsuite/common folder into c:/program files/innovationsuite/ironcad/ . Dont overwrite anything and don't re-register the DLL's, just copy them. You might want to reboot after copying also. There is a chance that this might clear up some conflicts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 26, 2002 Author Share Posted March 26, 2002 Thanks Chris, but copying those files didn't help. I'll remove AutoCad, re-install IronCad, and procrastinate on purchasing an AutoCad 2002 license for a little while. Gotta get some IronCad work done! Cheers, John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 26, 2002 Share Posted March 26, 2002 One thing I just found out was hotfix2 had a fix for some autocad problems. I don't believe we have address a screen frees as a result of some other application getting in the way, but maybe. Do you have hotfix2 installed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 26, 2002 Share Posted March 26, 2002 Also what version of Windows XP are you running (home/pro) and what build of MD4. Just straight release MD4 or did it have a patch? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 26, 2002 Author Share Posted March 26, 2002 Windows XP Pro, with all the latest microsoft critical updates. MD4, with SP1. I'll check for later SPs. MD4 was extremely buggy when it came out (apart from being nearly impossible to be creative and productive with). Just for fun, I made sure that Ironcad directories were ahead of MD4's in the path variable. Didn't help. IronCadded the last hour and a half fine, with MD4 removed. It does appear to be the problem. Thank you! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 27, 2002 Author Share Posted March 27, 2002 AutoDesk has 4 service packs for MD4. When I get a chance I'll apply them and go through the exercise again. I'd love to know, though, if anyone else is having any luck running AutoCad with IronCad. Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 27, 2002 Share Posted March 27, 2002 Thanks, do you have the hotfix2 for IronCAD installed? If not, when you are feeling a little massochistic, you could try installing the hotfix, reboot, put MD4 back on, reboot, and see if it freezes. The hotfix contained resolutions for instances where AutoCAD would interfere and IronCAD would fail to do things like create BOM's and use Parameters. That doesn't seem to be the case here (Can you create a BOM?) but it's worth a try. It's could be a VBA thing since we use VBA. I wonder if you install IronCAD after MD4 if the problem persists. What's really odd is XP corrects all of the "dll hell" problems that have occured with IronCAD including those patched in IC Hotfix2. XP has always handled dual/duplicate dll's with ease for me. I am successfully running AutoCAD 2000i with IronCAD on XP Pro. There were autocad with ironcad problems fixed by the hotfix but while I CAN reproduce the problem on Win2K, I've never had that problem on XP. I wonder if it could be something crazy like, running FAT32 instead of NTFS. I wonder if the dual dll code in XP has a problem with the filesystem or something. In any case, I am currently running ACAD with IC on XP w/no problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 27, 2002 Author Share Posted March 27, 2002 Hi Chris Tried IC5 with Hotfix 2. Nogoodsky. I never tried installing IronCad AFTER MD4. Also, never checked BOMs. I applied the fix to move the og70as.dll file from system32 to MDT, but in this case it didn't help. I'll borrow an AutoCad 2000i at the end of this week and give it a whirl. I suspect that the problem may lie in the Mechanical Desktop crap. Evaluating that program a couple of years ago was a very futile and frustrating experience!! All the filesystems I'm using are NTFS, on SCSI. I'll let everyone know how we do with AutoCad 2000i instead of MDT4. I think it will work. Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest nvikanes Posted March 27, 2002 Share Posted March 27, 2002 Yes We just upgraded a DELL Precicion 330 from WIN2000 to XP Now when we start IC 5 it gets the blue screen when chekking the code. It starts and then suddenly it turns ble.. and reboot. After re-installing everythink Win XP / IronCAD iut now works OK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaas Posted March 27, 2002 Share Posted March 27, 2002 Same here, Fire gl2(installed last week) /windows xp pro/amd/acad14 when orbiting or panning system freezes and reboots and then with some drawings i only can open a copy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 27, 2002 Share Posted March 27, 2002 eep, we're not seeing any of this freezing here so theres a strong chance it won't be fixed in the 5.2 release that is supposed to be "Certified for XP". Did you both "upgrade" instead of reformat and reinstall with a brand new OS? Microsoft OS upgrades make for the flakiest OS on the planet when it comes to IronCAD. If so you might try that reformat/reinstall. With the price of the upgrade being so much less than the price of a full version, and their new pricing scheme in general, I am afraid that most people will purchase the upgrade and be in for a world of hurt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 27, 2002 Share Posted March 27, 2002 I just remembered some things that I do on all of my Win2K+ OS' that might prevent this. 1) Disable the mouse shadow. Start/Settings/Control Panel/Mouse goto the "Pointers" tab and uncheck "Enable pointer shadow" 2) Disable the menu effects. Right click on the desktop and select Properties. Goto the "Appearance" tab, select [Effects] Uncheck *everything*. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 27, 2002 Share Posted March 27, 2002 Njal do you have a FireGL2 card also? Could this be a FireGL2 problem? Does anyone that is experiencing this problem have an alternate card that they could try? I'm running a Matrox g400 MAX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jloach Posted March 27, 2002 Author Share Posted March 27, 2002 Hi Chris I'll try a different card, but it will have to wait until next week, I'm afraid. Gettin' a bit behind! Running really well now with no AutoCad, though. Cheers, John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 27, 2002 Share Posted March 27, 2002 ok so Klass is running ACAD 14. Njal are you running AutoCAD? I'm running 2ki, I wonder if it's an "old AutoCAD" problem with 14 or MD4. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wim Posted March 27, 2002 Share Posted March 27, 2002 Its a brand new puter with xp. tommorow i will uninstall autocad and see what happens... Wim( at the company i dunno how to get logged in on my own name since i once used Klaas `s password) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dlalonde Posted March 28, 2002 Share Posted March 28, 2002 Chris wrote: "With the price of the upgrade being so much less than the price of a full version, and their new pricing scheme in general, I am afraid that most people will purchase the upgrade and be in for a world of hurt." Don't forget that you can do a clean windows install from an upgrade disk if you have the previous version cd available... (I remember upgrading from win95 to win98 - danged setup asked me for every one of the 12 or 14 win95 diskettes before proceeding). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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