Solidworks Crash on Dell Latitude

[pts1956]

I am running Solidworks on a Dell Latitude CPi R400GT with 128M of ram. I have installed all of the latest bios, video, etc.. drivers and am still experiencing alot of crashing problems.
Is anyone else out there have any ideas? I obviously can not change graphics cards!

 

[SBaugh]

Hello,

My company bought a Dell Latitude without my knowledge and we can't get the piece of crap to work with SW either. It's a combination of things. First I don't know all about your software and hardware, but in ours we are running Win 98 (mistake 1) with 256 Ram (OK). The ATI Rage Pro 8 megs on board (mistake 2). They are tring to run some network software for a person at the site, so they can connect to our network at the company. They say it will only run on Win 98 and not NT or 2000. So we can't change OS's (mistake 3). We have bumped up the Virtual memory space and that wasn't any help.

I told them to send it back it isn't worth the hassle, because you can buy one that is ready to handle SW, instead tring to fix this one. You could buy a new one for less money than it will cost to repair this one.

There is a famous saying that I sometimes use in a situation like this "You can't Polish a Turd" LOL

I know that isn't much help......Good luck, if I do find a solution I'll let you know,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
George Koch Sons, LLC
812-465-9574
sjb@kochllc.com

 

I had the same issue with my latitude c600. It turned out to be the graphics card, 8M ATI Rage. I had to turn off the graphics accelerator completely and the problem was fixed and has never had a crash since then.

Don't mind complainers or whiners, those who are, tend not to do anything but whine. Good luck.

 

[ketd]

I am using a latitude C800 with a 32MB graphics card which runs fine even with large assemblies. I can believe you are having problems with a smaller card. Switching to software GL should work

 

[SBaugh]

What 32MB grahics card are you using? We were told you we could get a larger card for that laptop!! 8MB was as big of card as we could get. If this is true, my respect for our MIS department is lower than low, and conitues drop.>:-<

Thanks for you input on this, Scott Baugh, CSWP
George Koch Sons,LLC
Evansville, IN 47714
sjb@kochllc.com

 

[ketd]

The Dell Lattitude C800 and Inspiron 8000 are both available with either the 32MB Geforce Card or the ATI Mobility M4. I have the ATI Mobility M4. Both cards are available with either 16MB or 32MB. I have just read an article in the September issue of the PC Magazine (Page 86) which indicates the Geforce card will be available with 64MB Ram.

The only problem I have encounterd with my card is that it suffers from the Unified Back Buffer problem which is common with Nvidia chip based cards. If you have a large number of graphics windows open it slows the graphics down. By keeping only a small number of windows open and frequently closing all graphics windows it does not cause me to much problem.