AutoCAD Mechanical not properly launching

[hititfaster]

Hi guys - I'm more of a regular over in the Solidworks forum, but have a query on AutoCAD today...

One of my colleagues has come in this morning and tried to open a file in AutoCAD Mechanical 2012. When you double click to launch in the normal manner, the ACAD icon appears on the start bar (Windows 7 by the way) and if I hover over the icon, I can see a thumbnail of the ACAD environment, but the full window does not appear. I tried opening it by locating an AutoCAD file and double-clicking, but this threw up an error: something like 'acadmpxi...' etc etc.

I Googled the error and read something about dll's, so ran Ccleaner (I do this on other machines as a matter of course) which cleared the error message, but AutoCAD still won't open. Unfortunately, now I cannot remember the full error message and Ccleaner has deleted my search history!

At a bit of a loss now as I don't know what to search and I've never come across this error before. Any ideas before I try a re-install?

Thanks in advance!

 

[hititfaster]

I'm going to add confusion to my list of issues now... Out of curiosity I just tried opening up AutoCAD Mechanical 2011, which is also installed on the same machine and it's working perfectly!

 

[mflayler]

As a note, Autodesk has always recommended that you open the program first and then open the file. DWG can be associated to so many things it may have been trying to launch something elst insted of Mechancial that was trowing the error.

 

[hititfaster]

Oh this is going to make you laugh, it sure did me...

I've had a client in most of the day, so after my few confused minutes this morning and the aforementioned colleague moving to another machine, I decided to leave the issue for later. Just got finished with the client and a slightly sheepish looking colleague turns to me and says, "I've fixed it". OK, go on...

He omitted to remember that he'd connected the machine (a laptop) he was working on to the dock behind it. Which was connected to a second monitor... Which wasn't turned on. AutoCAD had just popped straight to the right hand monitor and not to the laptop screen!

Coincidentally, there probably was an error in opening it the first time, which I've cured with Ccleaner but never thought to check the dual monitor.

Well, I won't forget that one quickly haha!