X2 shutting down problem ???

[Bruce]

Hi there,

 

I purchased X2 with a nethasp a couple of months ago and I am still trying to get it to work, without crashing. I don’t want to bore you all with a lot of history, but a bit of back ground info first.

• My reseller is aware of the problem and has spent considerable time trying to find a solution, as yet no luck.

• My reseller has been in contact with the MC technical support team, and they have suggested a number of reasons for the problem and how to fix it, however to date there suggestions have not worked.

• If I don’t change the files paths as set by the default program installation the software runs fine.

• I encounter problems, when I change the path to where I want all the data saved, In this case a server.

• Our IT staff have confirmed that their are no limitations placed on us when writing or reading data from/to the server.

• The X2 config, machine def & control def files are all saved on the local PC hard drive.

• The X2 data files are saved to the G drive, which is a server.

Now for the problem, I can be working away happily on X2 and without any warning up pops a message, “Mastercam has encountered a problem and needs to shut down”. It doesn’t happen in any particular operation or function, it’s totally random and without warning. It can happen a 12 times in an hour or day or only once, but as it is, you can’t run X2 without that feeling in the back of your head, that any second it’s going to crash.

 

I can't be the only user; who is trying to run X2 from a number of desktop PC’s and want to save all the data to one location (a server). Has any one else encountered this problem ?????????????????????????????

 

[titanium neck]

I have had X2 shut down like that, but only when windoze is doing an update or when some other program suddenly starts running in the background. If your computer is connected to the network, there might be something along those lines that is causing the problem.

[andrewgore]

Bruce,

We run like you, and have all our X2 files up on a server. I was having problems myself, but it was due to the fact that the hard drives in our server are dog slow. When the machine would go to autosave or something of the like, I would occaisionally crash X2. I ended up switching to working on my files off of my local hard drive, and then when done with everything, move it all to the network. 100+mb files save much faster on a 10k rpm hard drive than the old school ones in our server. Not sure if that will fix the problem here, but might be a good help.

 

Andrew

 

edit...you should also be able to run other things at the same time. I realize most people will say to never run anything other than Mastercam on your pc (which I find to be absolutely stupid imo), but as long as your computer is all up to date with hardware...it shouldn't really be a problem. I've run multiple instances of solidworks, winamp, excel, a few other things, and mastercam at the same time with no real problems.

[Troy Gossett Indepak Inc.]

Autosave??? uncheck prompt before save.

 

I had the message you sre getting when autosave was set to prompt me.

 

For processing speed reasons I'd suggest having current file on local hard drive and mirror or backup to server, and then save to server when finished with it. Any time you are working with a network drive many other thing could be ocurring without you knowledge. Like Virus scan, Drive BU, Software Maint. these all can cause an interruption in access to the file you are working on and cause X to crash.

[Bruce]

I don't have the autosave function turned on at this stage, but it sounds like from your responses working directly to a server is not the way to go (what a pity, I had such high hopes). Anyway the weather is nice

[cadman2112]

quote:

---

who is trying to run X2 from a number of desktop PC’s and want to save all the data to one location (a server). Has any one else encountered this problem ?????????????????????????????

---

Don't run off of the server, work locally and save to the server.

[Bruce Caulley]

We run all of our files, posts, MD's, configs etc off a server. The only difference with us is that we don't use nethasp.

 

Bruce

[Colin Gilchrist]

We run our files straight off the server, autosave turned off, Backup turned on, Config files are on the local machine, MD/CD/Posts/Tools are all on the network.

 

We have the occasional Mastercam shutdown, but nothing that prevents us from running all of our files remotely.

 

We have 26 seats of Mastercam on a NetHasp.

 

I would look into your graphics card settings, make sure "backup" is enabled, save often, and run RAM Saver every 15 minutes. I personally run RAM Saver like its going out of style. I save after every toolpath operation I create(this has the benefit of creating an incremented backup copy of my current file. The backup directory gets bloated, but I do a sort by date modified about every 2 weeks and delete anything that is older than 4 weeks).

 

The last thing that I would also check with your IT guys: Make sure that there is no "power setting" that allows windows to shut off the power to your network adapter. I'm not sure exactly where to find the settings, try "Power settings" in the Control Panel and also try the "Device Manager".

 

HTH,

[Greg Williams]

Bruce,

 

What area are you in?

[Bruce]

Colin & Bruce Caulley

 

Your running X2 exactly how I want too, and thought you should be able too. I started out with the same setup as you guys quoted, except backup was turned off. The Nethasp is not on the main sever it’s connected to a small local server I have access to, but you can’t used it to save lots of data. I have been changing the settings to try and find the problem, as yet no luck. The PC/laptop I am using as a test bench is a Dell T240 @ 1.83 GHz, 2.00 GB RAM running Windows XP SP2.

What should I be looking at with the graphic card settings ?

I have tried working locally with the; config/CD/MD/posts/tools/material files on the local C drive and only saving the NC/NCI/MCX (data files etc) to the server, but got the shutdown problems.

I wonder if there is a problem, having to save files deep within the “sever tree structure” or having long names on some of the “server directories”.

[Bruce]

Greg,

 

Bisbane

 

Cheers

Bruce

[Bruce Caulley]

It has to be server or hardware related. I even have autosave on and don't have any real problems.

 

Bruce (The other one)

[Greg Williams]

Bruce,

 

What is the Graphics card and driver in your notebook?

[Greg Williams]

Are you connected to the network via ethernet or Wlan

[gcode]

Bruce,

have you tried shutting off the Windows System

Restore Utility? I have seen this cure similar problems on some network systems. On others it has had no affect whatsoever.

[Bruce]

Other system info,

Graphics card - NIDIA Quadro NVS 120M

Windows System Restore - Disabled

Network connection - Ethernet

 

At the moment with my current configuration (X2 looking for certain files on the server), I can't even open up a drawing file, as soon as I go to “file open” X2 shuts down, no error message it just shuts down! I can however start a new drawing or play around with the other menus, but as soon as go “file save” it shuts down again.

 

I am going back to our IT guys and see what else they can come up with.

[gcode]

quote:

---

Graphics card - NIDIA Quadro NVS 120M

---

Bruce, this video card is a ligth duty card designed to run buisiness apps like Word and Outlook. It will give you nothing but grief.

If this is a Dell machine, uninstall the Dell video drivers and install the latest from the Nvidia Drivers page.

For some reason, Dell Quadro drivers give Mastercam trouble.

 

However, the graphics card is not causing your current troubles. If I recall you said X2 runs fine with a default confg file and saving to your work to a local drive???

 

another dumb question... you've got Net Framework

2.0 installed??? X2 won't run without it

[Bruce]

Yep, Net framework 2.0 is installed. X2 works fine on my PC when all settings are "local" as in the default config file. Problems start when I try the user the server.

[gcode]

a quick experiment

 

go to the Mastercam X utility in the control panel

and change the "File Open Dialog style"

from Mastercam X to Windows Standard.

and hit Apply.

 

Make sure X2 is closed when you try it.

I have no idea if this will help, but nothing ventured, nothing gained

 

also try turning off the Save a bitmap option

in the config settings

[Bruce]

Very interesting, yes and no.

 

Changing "File Open Dialog style" from Mastercam X to Windows Standard allowed me to open three out of four my test drawing.

Where is the "Save a bitmap option" I need stronger glasses.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Still scratching my head here bruce. We do everything you want to do with no problems.

 

Like you we are running the NetHasp on a small local server (located in our area), and saving data to a remote file server (located in another city).

 

I like your idea about string length, that might be one place to start looking. I don't think any of our file path/name strings are more than 60 characters long. We do not impose any kind of limit, but our file storage structure is pretty basic. We have our storage server drive letter, let's call it "X" for now (I can't put up anything that is even remotely like our actual names, this is just an example). so our path would look like this:

 

X:InWorkSomeRandomJobFolderNameMastercamPartFileName.MCX

 

We are running Windows Server 2003 on our NetHasp server, I'm not sure if that matters or not, I really just dabble in the IT side of things.

 

So to recap:

 

Turn off "save bitmap" and use the "window" dialog for file get. - from Gcode

 

Try creating a shorter path if possible for your server to use.

 

Good luck,

[gcode]

quote:

---

Changing "File Open Dialog style" from Mastercam X to Windows Standard allowed me to open three out of four my test drawing.

---

Thats progress, can you save them without crashing??

 

the bitmap thingy is on the Files page in

System Config

 

another suggestion

Right click My Computer/Advanced/Performance

Settings/ and set the radio button to

"Adjust for Best Performance"

your video card needs all the help it can get.

[Bruce]

Well changing, "File Open Dialog style" from Mastercam X to Windows Standard worked for a short time, I was able to create three simple tool paths before I got the familiar “Mastercam has encountered a problem and needs to shut down” message, so that may have helped but it didn’t solve the problem.

Still looking for the "Save a bitmap option" to turn off.

 

Colin, your file names are not that different to ours in length or tree depth. I will see what I can do about shorting them a bit, and see what happens.

 

OFR on 'Rryad_pool7_serverGroups3'(G:)workshopMechanical Workshop staff onlymcamx

[gcode]

Out IT Dept has dicovered

"The Principle of Least Rights" and decided that's they way to go.

The PoLR means giving users the absolute minumum

permisions they need to do thier job and that will make the networks more secure.

 

In my case it meant my Power User rights were dialed way way back. I can't even delete an icon from my destop anymore

 

When they first rolled back my permissions it was a terrible hassle. I couldn't save toolbars

or change config settings.

 

I lost a days work in Predator when I opened a

58 tool library. I could modify it and it saved as a 0 byte file

 

If I saved a file from my Destop to the network, no one else could open it.

I discovered this with 3 managers looking over my sholder while dealing with an emergency.

We're slowly getting things ironed out and I'm actaully able to get some work done now.

I still can't save Solidworks toolbars and since

writing to the registry is required for that

I never will be able to save a SolidWorks toolbar.

 

Our IT manager nearly blew a gasket when I insisted that I needed the right to save a file to my C drive.

 

Its maddening enough that I'm thinking of looking for a differnt job

 

Bruce, do you have full admin rights on your machine??? If not, have you IT guy log on with full rights and see if the crashes get better.

[Bruce]

Just one more question, what are you chaps using to control the network system, We use "Novell" ???