sudden shut down and restart while using solidworks

[sojouner]

we have 2 "new "machines at work , both are pentiun 4s running @1.8 GHZ(intelp4 845 pe chipset on mother board i think) with 512 MEGS RAM AND 3d labs video card 64 meg wildcat(?) dual vid out puts running on win xp.
the problem is we are getting random shut downs and reboots . i want to know if anybody else is having (had ) a similar problem.
ithink that it is a power supply problem.
what does a p4 1.8 ghz proc supposed to run on? is it 1.5 volts ? during boot up I see the bios saying 1.5 volts( although I don't know if it has anything to do with the proc voltage)
i thougt that a p4 1.8 ran @ around 1.75 - 1.85 volts?
anyother suggestions would be of great help!
thanks brett

 

[NathanN]

It could be the power supply. There are many small utilities that can tell you what voltages your power supply is giving while you are in Windows. Motherboard Monitor is a good one.

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

A 300W power supply is the minimum I would consider for a new computer - 350W is better.

Other things to check out include:
Is it overheating?
Do you have the latest drivers for everything and the latest motherboard BIOS too?
Is the video card supported by SolidWorks?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the older P4s built on the 0.18 micron process use 1.75V, while the newer 0.13 micron CPUs use 1.5V. Anyway, your motherboard will know what voltage it should be running the CPU at. Just set it to the default and you can't go wrong

 

[Regg]

Do you get an unhandeled error message before they shut down and reboot?

 

[Mandrake22]

I was have a reboot problem as well, at home, during a recent spell of hot weather. After blowing off the cpu and fan and another heat sink on the motherboard my cpu temperature dropped 20°F. No more reboots at the same ambient temp. It's cooler now and the motherboard is 30° cooler than the max of 145° that I saw. I heven't replaced the case side yet. I know that the "experts" say to leave it on to ensure proper air flow but it's been working fine. Try it, it's free!

 

[sojouner]

thanks for the reply Nathan
will suggest that motherboard monitor to the it specialist.
I also told them to order good power supplies with the comps unfortunately i am umable to confirm at this point in time weather what i told them was listened to.
I even suggested 350 - 500watt power sups .
the comps should not be over heating as they arrived on tuesday last week fresh from the store(unless the heat sink has worked loose some how) although our office is quite dusty and should have more cleaning of the comps as normal maintenance.

p4 1.8ghz should be runing on 1.75 volts not 1.5 as i think our ones are. Will update you on this tomorrow.


REGG
no the comp just reboots right at the most inconveinient time (2 seconds beore a major save))
in saying that though we had a couple of p3 800 that used to have a lot of unhandled errors that just kicked us out of solidworks. And they were running under nt4.6 SW2003 sp3.1 as well

will have a look at your suggestions Mandrake
thanks guys

 

[SBaugh]

Best thing to remember to do is use Ctrl-S (Save) a lot and not wait to do a major save. Your obvisously lossing lots of time with this problem and until you can get it figured out use Ctrl-S as often as possible.

Your problem sounds like a Power supply failing or a fan not working. My Power Supply fan stop working, so needless to say the power supply would start to overheat. The way the power supplies are made is that when it gets to a certain temp is shuts down the entire system without any notice. This keeps the computer from frying itself.

Till I bought a new fan I would have wait a few minutes after it started the computer, and stick my finger inside the blades and hand start my fan. It worked till I got tired of doing that. (Home computer)

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[sojouner]

steve
Ctrl-S is used a lot .
we recorded what we were doing at the time of the crashes we had today.
my one crashed 2 times (did not see a pattern)
the other caddies one crashed about 6 times all when he was zooming in and out.
the products that we are modeling aren't exactly monstrous .
hope this helps in diagnosis of problem.

 

[SBaugh]

steve you mean Scott

Ctrl-S is used a lot. That's good!

We recorded what we were doing at the time of the crashes we had today. My one crashed 2 times (did not see a pattern) the other caddies one crashed about 6 times all when he was zooming in and out. The products that we are modeling aren't exactly monstrous .

hope this helps in diagnosis of problem.

For your machine there I'm not sure check out faq559-507 & faq559-488.

As for your other caddies zooming in and out and they get a crash tells me that its your video card. Whether it's a driver or a hardware problem I can't say, but the best way to test this theory is to restart the computer in VGA mode and run the part again. Zoom in and out and see if you crash. If you don't then it's driver. Try a newer driver or if you are using the latest try and older one.

I hope that helps,


Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[sojouner]

We think we have a potential culprit for the problems and its not heat. my comp crashed 5 times this morning in sw within an hour . between 7:30 am-8:30 am . I checked in the bios the temp of the proc an it was 39deg quite cool. we think that it is when the factory starts it lights or machinery that take a bit of current it effects the comps. we tried an experiment this afternoon when the floor had gone home .all factory lights were turned on (nothing happened on the comps ) but we think that it is because non of the machines were on at the same time. just the lights. we are going to keep an eye on it tomorrow. to see if the same thing happens at the same times.
All the cad comps have a surge protector but not an UPS system attached.
we have an athalon 2200+ which we also use that is almost rock solid. It just seems to be the p3 and p4 machines that tend to crash. I also use an old p3 866 as a back up to my "new"1.8 ghz that p3 crashed once today.
thanks

 

[NathanN]

lol, that's another one to add to the trouble shooting list:

"Are you having brown outs?"

Glad to hear you sorted it out.

 

[sojouner]

no we have not sorted it out !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
my comp crashed this morning "Once" and"once" @ the end of the day.
I found out about the open gl tick box in the control panel for the 3dlabs vp560 and it certainly seems to have helped my sys stability.
I phoned our sw supplier and he said that I need to update the drivers for this card (will be done on Monday)we are on 3.1.392.0 (from Mem) he said there is a new one out 4050 (i think is the number.)we will see if this fixes it
I tried the same tweek on the other machine (identical to mine) It crashed worse than ever. and even changing it back to the original settings didn't stop it .
Heres something else 20 mins after the other caddie left for the day his comp rebooted its self and started up by its self !!! also when I walked in this morning both the comps were on and I know that I turned them both off last night .
Does anyone have any ideas!!!!????
please help it is costing a lot of time and money!!!!*@#(*$(&$($(*@(^#

 

[SBaugh]

When a computer reboots itself, I would start looking at a problem with your OS. This is not fun but I would take on of your caddie's computers and reformat the entire hard drive and reinstall the OS and all neccessary drivers. Then install SW and see what your stability is then (This shouldn't take more than 2-6 hours. I can reformat my hard drive and be back in business in 2 hours. I have done 1 to many times with my home system). I don't think your problem is in SW, it's in the OS. It's just a coincident that it does it when your using SW. You have to remember that SW will run your computers harder than any other program on the market today. If your computer OS and hardware is not up to speed or setup correctly then you will have unusual problems. Also when installing programs with an Anti-virus on could also cause issues not just in SW.

I hope this helps,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[Regg]

Scott,

Funny you should say that it could be the OS. My VAR told me the same thing but our IT people just blew it off. I still get crashes that reboot my computer but not as often since I changed the start up folder in my shortcut on the desk top to one I had rights to (IT changed my rights to the folder it was originally set to).

Regg

 

[SWVB101]

One thing that I have seen happen in the past, (most often with autocad) is a bug with Auto-Save...

if you have the autosave turned on, and it tries to handle a system resource expensive routine, and save at the same time, the end result is usually one of 3 things:

1) solidworks freezes up

2) Notorious "Blue Screen of Death"

3) "Random" Reboot

If you have Auto Save turned on, try turning it off, and...
REMEMBER TO SAVE MANUALLY, as mentioned above Ctrl-S is a good practice to use.... OFTEN!!!

Good Luck,
--Josh

 

[sojouner]

thanks Scott for the suggestions will let you know on monday if any of these are going to be applied to the comps(and any results). I had a thought last night could the comps be set up to wake on lan in the BIOS? that seems weird to me for it is not a setting that we have set up!
Thinking about it, as it has only happened 3 times once on my comp and 2 times on the other i would go with your suggestion of OS problems.

REGG
what exactly do you mean? (not being rude) I want to understand what this would do for stability? thanks

JOSH
good point Josh will check on auto save and let you know what happens!!
thanks for the help!!

 

[sojouner]

Heres something else , when i first open up a dwging file and zoom up to an area on that dwg
the screen "jumps" and quite often "crashes at that same point .(I think it is a driver issue.)But will check out the OS and the other Suggestions and let you know the results on Monday!!
thanks Brett

 

[NathanN]

After you have reinstalled your OS, I would suggest running a couple of test to see how stable your comp is.

MemTest tests your ram for errors. I would suggest letting it run for a couple hours.

http://www.memtest86.com/

Also, Prime95, which calculates really big prime numbers, is a good test of overall system stability. Run the torture test to give your computer a nice hard workout.

http://www.mersenne.org/

And lastly, 3DMark2001. This is a 3D graphics benchmark that also doubles quite nicely as a stability test for running 3D apps.

http://www.futuremark.com/download/

If all these run fine, then you're probably getting some sort of compatibility issue with SolidWorks.

 

[StarrRider]

Sojouner

Check your BIOS before you do a complete reinstall of the OS. We purchased 2 new machines that were supposedly identical – 1 crashed to the desktop all the time while the other one didn’t. The setting that seemed to be the culprit was “Halt on Errors” – The machine that crashed all the time was set to Halt on No Errors and the one that didn’t was set for Halt on All Errors. – We had another system that only crashed once and a while – It became more stable after the setting was changed from Halt on All but Mouse Errors.

Lee

Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.

 

[sojouner]

Ladies and Gentlemen , we have a winner !!
(and the crowd goes wild) Yes we seem to have sorted the problem.... my Comp did not crash once today and the other caddies only crashed once after we made a cetain change!!
ok ok I'm holding you all in suspence >
GRAPHICS DRIVER Need I say more??
Changed to the latest driver and stable as !!
lesson 1 for young players check drivers and update as neccessary.
If you are using 3dlabs cards (we have wildcat vp 560's )go get the 3.1.4050... drivers apparently they (from our experience) fix up the mess that occurs with the previous drivers .
Don't forget to set the open GL settings to solidworks .
thanks to every one for their help and suggestions. will be keeping a very close eye on the comps to see how stable they are. Today might have been a coincidence

 

[JNR]

I was about to post you a reply suggesting you check your graphic driver, and lo-n-behold you found it yourself.

We had the same problems (which did vary in frequency between "indentical" machines). I think one of the most annoying manifestations is not just a plain crash, but one of those instant reboots. In our case it was 3d labs graphics. However all the suggestions given have merit in various circumstances.

We settled on NVIDIA Quadro's in our new machines. There is good reason to go this way in future, as "rumor" has it that SW 2004 is baslined on this chipset and some feature may not work or work properly without it. I have suggested to SolidWorks that they should make this information public ASAP.

3/4 of all the Spam produced goes to Hawaii - shame that's not true of SPAM also.......