Solidworks Crashes 1

[Justin8208]

Here at work we have 5 cpus running Solidworks 2010 SP0. All installed the same way, and all worked at one point in time. Recently one of them decided to start crashing when opening a sldrw. It will open all models and assemblies fine. But when making a drawing or opening one it will crash. I've done a full clean install, deleted registry key and all. Please help!!!

Windows XP SP3
Intel Xeon 5140 @ 2.33GHz
2 GB RAM

Solidworks 2010 SP0

 

[ctopher]

Maybe someone created a large assy?
You need more RAM also.

Chris
SolidWorks 09 SP4.1
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[Justin8208]

All our cpu's have 2 gigs of ram and work ok...

Solidworks crashes on any drawings. Whether it be a new drawing created from a simple part or opening a drawing from a previous simple part. Anytime i try to open or make a drawing it crashes and gives me the "restart solidworks" prompt box.

 

[MadMango]

Not to cover the basics, but ensure you have the latest graphics card drivers that are approved for your OS and SW. If that doesn't fix it, try running in OpenGL mode in SW. If that fixes it, you might need new graphics drivers or better cards.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of these Forums?

 

[Justin8208]

Tried OpenGL, no change... The cpu has a Nvidia Quadro NVS 290 video card. I can open up very complex assemblies and the graphics are fine, just opening drawings makes it crash. I can model all day long...

 

[MadMango]

That's a terrible graphics card for CAD, no wonder you are having crashing issues. Please see faq559-936, a bit dated, but the link to the SW site and graphics testing page is still good. Time for a new PO for real cards.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of these Forums?

 

[Justin8208]

Its not the card. I have 4 other computers that work perfectly with that same card. Sure, it maybe old. But it does work.

 

[ctopher]

The card could work fine, until you start having issues....and crashes.

Chris
SolidWorks 09 SP4.1
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[gwubs]

Justin8208, just because a non approved card can work, it still does not make it a good choice. The NVS 290 card has been the source of numerous problems raised in this forum. Face the facts - it's not an approved card. I don't know how many times non approved cards are rationalized as ok because they are good gaming or business solution parts. Get someone in your IT department to do his homework, whoever is specing these is not up on SW. Sorry for being blunt, but there it is.

 

[AnnaWood]

Justin8208,

Are you even considering that you could be starting to see the signs of hardware failure on the computer having problems? It does happen.....

Could be any bit of the hardware on that particular computer.

You have bottom of the barrel graphics and not near enough memory to be running SolidWorks.

You could be suffering from power supply failure, video card failure, memory failure, etc....

Swap the video card out between computers first.

Get yourself 2 more gigs of memory and real graphics cards. They are cheap....

Cheers,



Anna Wood
Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 Gb RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gb SSD, Dell 3008WFP 30" Monitor
SW2010 SP2.1, Windows 7 x64

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[nickjb]

If the PCs are identical you could try swapping some hardware over (graphics card, ram, etc) and see which one crashes.

 

[Jaredp]

Justin8208,

Were you able to find a solution to this problem? We have a machine here that worked fine on SW2009 and now we upgraded it to SW2010 SP2.1 and now it will not open any drawings. It has a certified video card and the latest driver along with 3gb of ram.

 

[depitydawg]

We just purchased SW2010 SP0
On first install would open existing part files but not allow new part file creation (would crash with restart message). Checking Options/File Location I reversed the search order so the Tutorial directory was on the top. Now I could open existing and new part files. I can open existing and new assembly files. I cannot open new or existing drawing files (crashes with restart message). I did a clean re-install with all registries deleted and all anti-virus software off and ALL Solid Works Directories erased and still the same problem with the drawing files. I noticed in the File/New dialogue box (in advanced mode) three tabs existed, Templates, old, Tutorial. I made the old tab by copying the original Template tab templates which only had two templates in it. I copied the Tutorial templates into the Templates folder to fix the inability to open new part files "THE FIRST TIME I INSTALLED SW". So a clean re-install is not all that clean. I think Jaredp's situation indicates it is not a graphics card or memory issue.

Justin8208 you mentioned "Recently one of them decided to start crashing" did you make any changes to this machine or the SW's software?

 

[Justin8208]

As a matter of fact, as soon as I loaded SW I deleted the tutorial templates and added ours and that's when it started giving me problems. I'm going to replace the tutorials and see what happens. Thanks for the help.

 

[mjcole]

See what options you have set in System Options > Default Templates and for File Locations - Templates are pointing where your templates are loaded.

If the Part Assembly and Drawing .+++dot paths are pointing to existing locations and that the option Always use these templates is not selected.

In addition to making SolidWorks uninstall Cleanly SolidWorks should be able to find the files from previous installation and put them in the 2010 installation default location or prompt for you to choose the desired folder.

Michael

 

[Justin8208]

ok, i put the tutorial files back and pointed solidworks to them and now it doesn't crash. I still have our templates in a tab at the top, it just added the "tutorial" tab as well. Seems as though solidworks would have thought of this problem and just prompted you to find a template to open a file with or something... instead of crashing. Works fine now! Thanks for the help.

 

[Jaredp]

Well, I tried all the suggestions listed here with the tutorial template locations and settings to no avail. The one machine still will not open an existing drawing or create a new drawing without crashing. Any other suggestions????

 

[depitydawg]

I am in the same boat still crashes if opening a drawing. I have a Solid Works vendor working on this issue as well. Hopefully he will come up with something.
Justin8208: in case your still listening. You said "I put the tutorial files back and pointed solidworks to them"

Which tutorial files? Where exactly did you put them? What option in solidworks did you point to them? Where did you point? And was the path that did the pointing at the top middle end (or where) in the list of paths?

I have a feeling this is a wild goose chase but you never know. Did you do anything else, other then what you have mentioned, that may have made it now not crash???

 

[depitydawg]

Jaredp

I have a solution that worked on the two machines I had exhibiting the crash when opening drawing files. I should thank John C who passed me to Tim R who along with Andy H passed me to Brent M of Solid Works who ... solved the problem.

It involved the environment variable windir. When I looked at this variable by checking the My Computer Properties Advanced Environment Variables System Variables window (near the bottom) it showed windir set to c:\windows

However in the Registry under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment
the windir value is shown as %SystemRoot%

In the registry change this windir value to c:\windows

Reboot the machine and voila the problem should be solved!

Hope this works for you.

Apparently it is a Windows issue not a Solidworks issue as a similar failure occurs to other software packages.

 

[Jaredp]

depitydawg,

I'll remember to try this if we get another machine that does this again. We acutally ended up formating the hard drive and reinstalling windows on our problem machine. We now have Solidworks up and running again. Thanks for the update though.