Pro E no longer opens

[madmattd]

Well, this has been a very hard error to figure out. I have had Pro E WF4 installed on my desktop for over 2 months (last formatted then, had it for 6 months before that too), no problems. I was using it last Thursday afternoon, but left town for the weekend Friday. Upon getting back Sunday, Pro E suddenly decided it wasn't going to open. It would get just past the splash screen, and look like it was trying to load the web browser bit when it closed. No explanation, nothing. I checked for the std.out file, and it only contained the following line:

<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Exception - code was -1073741819.
</div>
Now, I did some looking around, and PTC claims that this is an incompatibility issue with the graphics card. Well thats stupid, because it has worked fine on this system for over 8 months all told, with NO hardware changes along the line. I did try the most recent version of the graphics driver from Nvidia, same error. I tried adding the graphics win32_gdi to my config.pro, no dice (and yes, Pro E starts up in the directory where that config.pro file is located). I tried starting from a directory with no config.pro. Nothing. Always getting the same error. I even tried a complete uninstall and reinstall to a different folder, still the same behaviour. It did open up and work ONE time correctly. But the next time, nothing. A second reinstall didn't even replicate this behaviour, it just doesn't open anymore.

Just to reiterate, nothing on my computer changed between the last few days where it worked and now. No new Windows Updates, no hardware changes, nothing. It just stopped working.

I'm at my wit's end with this, I have a project I need to be able to work on, and right now I cannot. If anyone can suggest something, because I have spent hours trying to fix this this week to no avail.

System Specs if it helps:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.83 GHz stock)
Nvidia GeForce 9800GT 1GB (yes, technically not blessed by PTC, but it worked great until Sunday)
2 x 2GB DDR2 1066 RAM
Windows XP x64 (yes, I know I only need the 32-bit version here, but I am ordering another 4GB soon)
PRO Engineer Wildfire 4 Datecode M020 (SE)

 

[FireWild]

Yeah, I have the same problem with my work station and Wildfire 3, it stoped working after I ran a disk defrag, and I'm still not up and running. Check to make sure you don't have more than 1 config.win in your start in folder or home folder this used to be a problem in early WF. PTC had me try renaming a folder under C:\Documents and Settings\andya\Application Data\PTC\ProENGINEER\Wildfire\ so the system could recreate the folder. I tried this and no luck.... I'm still not up and running. Good Luck and please post anything you come up with....

 

[madmattd]

Yea, I actually have an old config.win from WF2, and I had a few errors in my std.out relating to toolbars that don't exist anymore. I renamed it to some random name so there was effectively no config.win, and that didn't work either.

But I tried renaming the folder in the directory you named, and it actually worked! We'll see if it still works tomorrow, I'll report back in the morning to let you know.

Thanks!

Matt

 

[madmattd]

Well, an update already. I closed Pro E and reopened, and back to the old behavior. Renaming the folder again did no good.

Matt

 

[DonChunior]

TAN 103734 is similar to your problems. The problem occurs when using CADDS5 or CADDS5 had been used. Remove the environment variable CVPATH should fix it.


DonChunior

 

[DonChunior]

In TAN 135662 is another reason for this error described.


The error canoccur under these circumstances:
<UL>
<LI>You've registered a Windchill server</LI>
<LI>You'va a config.pro option that points into the server (i.e. pro_symbol_dir wtpub://<server>/Libraries/Standards/symbols)</LI>
<LI>You start up Pro/E and the server is not available or doesn't accept the connection (to verify the option) on starup</LI>[/list]


What can you do:


Temporarily remove the config.pro option that points to the unavailable server


DonChunior

 

[madmattd]

None of those apply to my problem, I'm afraid. I have never had CADDS5 installed on this system. And regarding the second, I never had Windchill either, or any config.pro option relating to it set differently from default. Like I said, I even started Pro E up under the default config.pro with no luck. I still cannot understand why this stopped working overnight with NO changes to the system, on an initial install I could understand. Months in, I'm confused.

I could still check to see if somehow the environment variable got set for CADD, but I'm not sure where it is hidden.

Matt

 

[DonChunior]

If the variable has been set then you'll find it under RMB on desktop icon My Computer - Properties - Advanced - Environment Variables.


I'm sorry, I don't know what the problem could be else?!

 

[madmattd]

Yea, that seems to be a common theme. I checked, there is no environment variable CVPATH present, so that's not it, as I suspected. At this point it seems I am staring a format in the face. And I just did one a month ago...

 

[madmattd]

And this just in: my laptop is now doing the same thing. A format-reinstall probably won't help me at this point, I find it hard to believe that the same obscure bug occurred on 2 totally different systems at basically the same time (hadn't turned on the laptop in a week).

Edited by: madmattd

 

[FireWild]

Wondering if it's a MS Window's thing. Do you run the MS automatic update thing?I know I have my machine set up to run the auto updatesfor Windows XP. I've tried un-installing the latest ones and it did not help.I'm still down on my machineand I'm just short of a total re-formating.

 

[madmattd]

Well, I do auto updates, but I manually download them and install, all MS does is let me know there are updates to download. And that is how I have always done it, no problems until now. I thought that maybe a recent update broke things, but the last update was installed several days before everything went bad, and I was using the software all day for those days between, with several restarts of Pro E along the way.

The laptop behavior seems buggy, as I can still use the program sometimes without it closing. I've got an email into PTC's support for the Student Ed, though they will probably never respond.

 

[jrb3]

I had a similar problem. Try to set the graphic card hardware acceleration to none, then open Pro/E.
It worked for me. After reinstall of the graphic card driver everything worked well.

 

[FireWild]

jrd3,


What is the make and model of your graphic's card? And how similar was your problem?


I run a 2 monitor dualview desktop at a high resolution, it's a ATI card but I'm not sure of the make and model at the moment. I'm wondering if one of the Windows updates messed with my video card driver. I'm going to update my driver and give it a try...





Thanks for the post jrd3

 

[FireWild]

To all,





Please help if anyone else has an idea please post it. PTC support has not been able to fix this, and the online community is my only hope.<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

 

[madmattd]

That's the problem that is allegedly fixed by setting the graphics option to win32_gdi or something like that. No dice there. Even your fix was useless, it made my system incredibly slow, gave me 80000 popups from nvidia about how acceleration had been disabled and how to reenable it, and even after all that, Pro E closed the same.

Even with a new license file, I have this issue (not that I thought it was the license anyway). At this point, I might have to do the format afterall, ugh!

 

[FireWild]

madmattd
I've posted links to this thread in the Cad Admin and Modeling forms, hopefully this will get a little more visibility and maybe a solution.<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

 

[madmattd]

I sure hope so. Uninstalling the Windows fixes installed the last day Pro E worked didn't work, unfortunately.

 

[Mindripper]

Is there anything you did at the same time on both systems? Did you update to Internet Explorer 8, as the Windows Updates suggest? It almost sounds like you have a licensing issue, and if it's pinging the Internet to verify your license ID, this may be related.


PTC Support should help you on all of this, but my personal experience with PTC Support has been horrific - almost as bad as my experiences with PTC Sales. If you contact them, be sure to brush up on your Bengali and Hindifirst, as that's about all they can speak fluently.

 

[madmattd]

NOOO! I do not have IE 8 installed on either system. I don't use it anyway, that's why there is Firefox...

Yea, well my one experience with PTC support was terrible, as I could not even get into the tech support tree, since I do not have a maintenance subscription. I had a very simple question (since answered by trying it out).

I wondered if it was a licensing issue, especially since I have since found out I cannot have it one the 2 systems. PTC support hand-coded a new license for me, which of course didn't worked either. Their email support was actually pretty good, surprisingly. I'm going to try through that route to see if they have an answer other than the 50000 things I have already tried...