CRASH #3 @#$%^&*!!!!!!!!

[wheelinarcher]

why is 2004 so unstable? this is the third time in nine months I have had a crash. I am not talking blue screen of death, I am talking full blown unable to open cad at all. I just spent two hours trying to re-install, yes it is Easter but when the office is attatched to your house.... regardless, still nothing. I am ready to trash anything labeled ADESK. ANYONE ELSE HAVE SOOOOO MANY PROBLEMS?

[Walt Engle]

Okay, I know your frustrations. You may need to list your OS, ram, all other pertinent information for someone to know what might be the problem IF it could be partially or fully due to your computer.

That said, yes, some have had some problems but not quite as serious as yours appears to be. I have a Dell, 986Mz (I think - somewhere close to that speed), 256Mb ram. When I first installed I had some minor problems from time to time and after using the Repair feature three our four times, had no more problems.

I know you don't want to hear someone else tell you they had small problems. Have you used a registry tool to clean out ALL references to autocad? (NOTE: don't use this tool later when autocad is installed as it will strip registry referencing CommCnt and you WILL have to re-install to get CommCntr back). Once all references to autocad have been cleaned from your registry, did you shut down
completely, restart your computer and re-install autocad? Are all your search paths listed as you need them?

Small items that may be helpful: Do you use the Disk Cleanup and Defragment at least twice a month? As a last resort (don't send me a nasty note about this) have you considered reformating your hard drive?

A little story: up to about a year ago, I had two hard drives: C & D. Drive C, 20G was my primary and drive D, 10G was used for backing up. Began having little, teeny problems from time to time but nothing that concerned me too much. Then it happened - whole system crashed! Drive D was corrupted and it caused my primary drive to not operate. Had to send drive D away to recover most of items on it.
This is just my way of saying some unusual things happen.

Hope something here helped - if not......I tried. Good luck.

[Non-Offensive, Professional Sounding Name]

Post by wheelinarcher
why is 2004 so unstable? this is the third time in nine months I have had

a crash. I am not talking blue screen of death, I am talking full blown
unable to open cad at all. I just spent two hours trying to re-install, yes
it is Easter but when the office is attatched to your house.... regardless,
still nothing. I am ready to trash anything labeled ADESK. ANYONE ELSE
HAVE SOOOOO MANY PROBLEMS?

Do get upset with me...but have you tried the following:

(After I did all this, my occasional crashes disappeared)

1) Remove all spyware/malware crap on your PC. Use AdAware, Spybot, etc.
2) Update and run anti-virus (I'm sure that you did, but do it again just to
check it off the list). Make sure that the anti-virus program is set to NOT
scan DWG files. Maybe this is causing the problem.
3) Disable all non-essential programs running in the background, even if
they only take up minimal system resources. Examples? File sharing or
scanner software.
4) You'll really start to get cranky with this one...double your RAM,
especially if you have less than 512Mb. I've seen Windows 2000 and
sometimes XP crash when installed on a PC with too little memory (regardless
of what the "minimum requirements" says).

Tell us what happens.

[Walt Engle]

Some of this I agree with - and some I do not. I have 256Mb ram and do not have
ANY problems. However, "Non-Offensive" has mentioned something I didn't think
about: I got rid of Norton. They are too difficult to deal with and I took our
newspaper columnist's advice and got AVG free from Grisoft. Grisoft also has a
$30 enhanced version of AVG which I am about to purchase. When I first installed
AVG it found 53 - yes, I typed correctly 53 - viruses that Norton never found.
I also use Adware and scan with this about once a week. I also use MRU Blaster
which scans every 15 minutes, and Noadds.

[Non-Offensive, Professional Sounding Name]

Post by Walt Engle
Some of this I agree with - and some I do not. I have 256Mb ram and do not have
ANY problems. However, "Non-Offensive" has mentioned something I didn't think
about: I got rid of Norton. They are too difficult to deal with and I took our
newspaper columnist's advice and got AVG free from Grisoft. Grisoft also has a
$30 enhanced version of AVG which I am about to purchase. When I first installed
AVG it found 53 - yes, I typed correctly 53 - viruses that Norton never found.
I also use Adware and scan with this about once a week. I also use MRU Blaster
which scans every 15 minutes, and Noadds.

Please tell me that you're kidding about the 53 virusses that Norton didn't
find. Now, all of a sudden, I'm not so confident in the Norton Anti-virus
on my PC.

Did you have Norton up to date with the latest definitions? And, it still
failed to find those 53 virusses?

What kind of virusses were they? Maybe Norton has a problem with certain
genres of virusses.

First thing that I'm going to do when I go home is get that free (Praise
God, there are still decent, free products out there) and scan my PC. I'll
report back the results.

Good to know that your 256 Mb is sufficient. Do you use a separate graphics
card or an on-board one which uses system RAM?

[wheelinarcher]

80 Gig HD
512 RAM
Athlon ? processor, was built 8/03
AVG antivirus
Spybot
Windows XP
No Norton

[Non-Offensive, Professional Sounding Name]

Post by wheelinarcher
80 Gig HD
512 RAM
Athlon ? processor, was built 8/03
AVG antivirus
Spybot
Windows XP
No Norton

Exactly what is happening when there is a freeze or crash?

Any disk activity right before? When it freezes, is there ever ANY disk
activity (constant light)?

2D or 3D?

What about AUDITing the drawing? What about PURGEing it?

Are there any blocks downloaded from other people's drawings or from the
Internet?

Do you have any uncommon setups (compared to most users) like shared
licenses?

What about multiple installations of various AutoCAD/Autodesk products on
this PC?

Have you recently tried disabling ALL anti-virus & spyware-protection
applications while running AutoCAD?

I was just thinking out loud...

[wheelinarcher]

Exactly what is happening when there is a freeze or crash?
-nothing while in use, this time. I did some work Friday, about four hours. Came back sunday and it will not open. I get a constant hourglass then a "program is not responding"

Any disk activity right before? When it freezes, is there ever ANY disk
activity (constant light)? -no

2D or 3D? 2d

What about AUDITing the drawing? What about PURGEing it? _ I have never done either of these

Are there any blocks downloaded from other people's drawings or from the
Internet? yes. I use Anderson windows and ARCAT.

Do you have any uncommon setups (compared to most users) like shared
licenses? no

What about multiple installations of various AutoCAD/Autodesk products on
this PC? -no, but I do have Sketch-up

Have you recently tried disabling ALL anti-virus & spyware-protection
applications while running AutoCAD? -no

[Walt Engle]

After view all your responses, I am of the opinion that you need to re-format your hard drive and start all over. Yes - I know this is something that nobody wants to do, but
sometimes it is necessary to clean up the drive.

[Dean Saadallah]

3rd time in nine months? That's not unstable.
3rd time today, 3rd time this hour, 3rd time you restarted, now that's
UNSTABLE.

4hours work, do you use autosave? QSave often? BAK file recovered ok? Daily
backup from the day before? Do you alternate save to a different location?
You corrupted your file, why is what needs to be determined: are you using
plain AutoCAD? Do you use an add-on? Is this the same file over the last
nine months?
Can you post the file?

[Joel]

"Dean Saadallah" <info here at pendean the company> wrote in message...

Post by Dean Saadallah
3rd time in nine months? That's not unstable.
3rd time today, 3rd time this hour, 3rd time you restarted, now that's
UNSTABLE.

Here, here!!

I'd count myself lucky if I had ANY program that only crashed 3 times IN
NINE MONTHS - including Win XP itself.

[wheelinarcher]

oops! 6pm

[Non-Offensive, Professional Sounding Name]

Post by wheelinarcher
oops! 6pm

I can't remember if anyone asked you this...

Did you have your anti-virus program turned off when installing the Autodesk
program(s)?

[wheelinarcher]

yes. and I use AVG

[Casey]

What other programs do you have running in the background when you are using
Autocad?... I've noticed, that when I have winamp playing music in the
background, my AutoCad crashes twice as often....

Just a thought.

Casey

Post by wheelinarcher
yes. and I use AVG

[wheelinarcher]

*UPDATE*

I purchased "WIPEDRIVE" and cleaned my entire 80 G drive. Started yesterday at PM, quit at 130am. Got up at 8 and began loading. Worked like a charm. Instant install and it appears to run faster. I have it in a partition all alone. We'll see what happens now????