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40 Replies Latest reply on May 15, 2012 3:24 AM by N. V
Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 10:20 AM
Instability of 2011 and crashes Where do I begin? There are days where we spend more time crashing and restarting solidworks than we spend modeling. On a good day us modelers might crash 4 times. On a bad day, I've crashed upward of 20 times. This occurs more frequently on larger assemblies. I crash creating sketches. I crash when adding mates. I crash when inserting a component into an assembly. Click on a component within a drawing. Click on a toolbox entity within a drawing. Print something. It doesn't really matter what I'm doing or how complex it is. 2010 had its crashes, but never this bad. I know this for certain. Our tech support reps keep claiming its because we use a shared network drive, and we have norton. I don't buy into this one bit. We never had this many problems on 2010. I got four stations crashing repeatedly throughout the day. Our detailer / CAM persons don't crash as much as our modelers, but its still pretty bad. Had I known this, I would have never upgraded them to 2011. And I'm tired of hearing our support people tell us its because we share a network drive. "Get over it" Our shared drive use isn't going away any time soon. I keep my computer in great running condition. I update it regularly including its drivers. I clean the OS and unneeded junk on a regular basis. Eventually, I got tired of filling out the little box that asks "What were you doing?" when it crashes. Now I just type some angry disgruntled message into the box. I wish we could go back to 2010, but its too late now.
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Andy Sanders Mar 15, 2011 10:26 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
I think it would be very helpful to know your system specs in order to know how to to help. Actions
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Andy Sanders Mar 15, 2011 10:33 AM (in response to Andy Sanders) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
By the way, we've used a shared network for our files for years. Yes, there are drawbacks and issues, but crashing 20 times a day isn't one of them. Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 10:56 AM (in response to Andy Sanders) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Ya you know? Saving and loading has always been slow over the network, especially when sharing the toolbox database but its hard to believe that its the fault of all the grief. It annoys me that tech blames using a shared network drive for so many issues. Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 10:53 AM (in response to Andy Sanders) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
We have Windows XP Pro SP3 Solidworks professional 32 bit (2 stations) 32 bit core (2 stations) 64 bit core (1 station) Us two modellers have: Solidworks 32 bit professional Dell Precision T3400's with Core 2 Duo's 3.16/3.16 4GB's of ram ATI FireGL V7700's for video These two particular stations have Norton Internet Security. (This needs disabled before any major update or content patch.) Actions
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Andy Sanders Mar 15, 2011 10:58 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
I can say from experience that XP32 with 4 gigs of ram can be a factor in crashing. We had several high end Dells (T3400) with XP32 crash on a regular basis doing machine design. Not 20x a day, but enough that it was a problem, maybe 5x a day. We made the swich to Win7 X64 with 8-12 gigs of ram (depending on what the system would allow). Since then, very few crashes. It's really that much more stable. I don't wish using SW doing machine design on XP32 on my worst enemy. Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 11:05 AM (in response to Andy Sanders) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Thats really interesting. Would you say 2011 has more problems on XPSP3 than 2010 did? Or can't say for certain? We only had a few crash issues before we upgraded. Actions
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Andy Sanders Mar 15, 2011 11:13 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Every release tends to use more and more system resources. 64 bit is the future. Actually it's more or less present. 32 bit will only cause you grief from now on, unless all you do small stuff, but it sounds like you don't. I can't really think of any negatives on doing it, other than the time, cost and temporary inconvenience. Drivers are up to speed now for 64 Win7 unless you have really old devices. I'm surprised your VAR hasn't reccommended 64 bit/more memory. Actions
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Domenico Ianiero Mar 25, 2011 1:28 AM (in response to Andy Sanders) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Dear all, our experience is: After several consultations with SW Support and the acquisition of 2 new Workstations HP Z600, WIN 7 64 bit, 16 GB RAM, Solid Works 2011 is still crashing 1-10 times a day, in all kind of situations. Sometimes you are lucky that there is backup file, but most you loose a lot of time and work. We are despaired !! On our system is only SWX running , nothing else. We are using CATIA V5, Tebis, Trutops, Rhino , Peps and VISI in our company, but SWx2011 is the champion of instability. Reason will be > kick off Actions
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Kelvin Lamport Mar 15, 2011 11:12 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Do you have the /3GB switch enabled on the x32 systems? Actions
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Kelvin Lamport Mar 15, 2011 10:34 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
A shared network drive and/or Symantec/Norton should not make SW crash, however, I'll add my vote against Symantec. When it works, it works very well, but when it doesn't, it's really bad. The first thing I do for any system having problems is uninstall Symantec, and that usually eliminates the majority of problems. Can you post the specs of the four systems? How large are the "larger assemblies"? Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 11:04 AM (in response to Kelvin Lamport) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Yes, Norton in itself IS a virus as it bogs down boot, overall performance and loading/saving. I hate it myself, but its required by the company because of past 'issues'. Though I might be able to plea for a change from NIS to 360 if it makes a difference I have added the specs of the main machines above. Our larger assemblies could consist of 20-50 parts, sometimes more. The latest grief was caused by an assembly with 20 parts, but one of them was a complex core cavity model. This part file is 7-8mb by itself. Actions
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Matt Lombard Mar 15, 2011 11:36 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
50 parts is pretty small in the scheme of things. Its possible that your core cavity model has a lot of external references in it, which could be causing some problems (circular references, multiple contexts, broken links, etc). 10 mb files are also relatively tame. If you post that core cavity model, some folks could take a look at it and see if that might be contributing and possibly make some suggestions. Actions
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Matt Lombard Mar 15, 2011 10:39 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
This is of course my opinion, but I'd be willing to bet that your crashes are a local issue - one that you could solve yourself. I've used SolidWorks for a long time, and I have to say that the last several versions have been pretty solid in terms of stability. I tend to poke into those unused corners of the software where you find more crashes, and I have to say I don't crash more than once a week. If you are crashing 20x in a day and you aren't doing anything about it, someone else should be doing your job. If you are crashing like that, and someone is telling you what the problem is, and you're not doing anything about it, not even testing to see if they are right, not even installing Workgroup PDM to see if you can get rid of the problem, then you need to step aside. There are a lot of unemployed people out there who could handle your situation. Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 10:49 AM (in response to Matt Lombard) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Wow. You really radiate an aura of arrogance. Do you troll people here often? I know for fact sharing a network drive wouldn't cause that much instability. I know how to work on a copy locally, and I know how to disable norton. I also think you'd be surprised how many not-so-computer-savvy people also use solidworks. Maybe that angers you. If you think we've done "nothing" about the issue - such as spending the time on the phone with tech, or uninstalling, reinstalling software, or updating drivers or cleaning computers then maybe you need a reading comprehension course. Actions
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Adrian Velazquez Mar 15, 2011 11:18 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Daniel, When you are pushing your computer to it's limits (and you are, from your specs) every little detail counts, since it can be the drop that tips the glass over. I would strongly suggest moving to a x64bit OS and if you want this to end ask for a memory upgrade. Actions
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Charles Culp Mar 15, 2011 11:13 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Daniel, My response won't be as negative as Matt's, but the answer will be the same. You came here and did quite a bit of complaining, but don't seem interested in finding an answer, just complaining. So let's start again. I assume you want to fix your problem, and that is why you are here. As Matt so eloquently pointed out, your problem can be fixed. There are many people who are very happy with SolidWorks 2011, and have found it to be the most stable version of SolidWorks yet. 1. What kind of parts & assemblies do you work on? How many components are in each assembly. What kind of parts to you build? Sheet metal, surfacing, complex parts, molds? Give us some details. 2. What kind of harddrive are you running, and how long have you had it? What brand, size, and speed? When is the last time you ran defrag? How much empty space is on it? 3. Are you running in /3GB mode? 4. What is keeping you from switching to a 64bit operating system? Those systems are capable of running 64bit. It sounds like you have it installed on one of your systems. 5. Are these systems 3 years old? What is your sys admin policy on upgrades and installing new versions? Could you consider a re-install of the OS? 6. You say you work with a networked drive, but you have also tried working locally. Does working locally fix your problem? Do you have SW Professional, and would you consider running Workgroup PDM? Workgroup PDM would eliminate the issues with loading directly off of the network. 7. If not, have you considered buying better networking equipment? What kind of routers do you use? It is a linksys you bought at Fry's 5 years ago, or a business grade Cisco? Are you running gigabit? Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 11:42 AM (in response to Charles Culp) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Hi - Thank you 1. Assembies vary from 10-50 parts. Sometimes they focus around simple castings, others focus around complex cavity models with a thousand surfaces. These might be 5-8mb in size without tesselation data. On larger assemblies of 50-100 parts, we use sub assemblies to alleviate top level rebuilding and we load lightweight. 2. WD 80GB 7200K Sata drives; mine has 40GB free 3. No - it reads "Setting the 3GB switch in Windows is another way to stave off the dreaded out-of-memory error message, but use with caution. Activating the 3GB switch can cause performance problems with some graphics cards that have onboard RAM. " As I do not often hit the out-of-memory error, and already having stability issues. 4. I do not purchase the systems - it would be petitioned for. The 64 system was the latest purchase - I could do an OS upgrade if I could talk individuals into buying 5. 11-2008 so not quite 3 but slowly getting there 6. Working locally doesn't fix the issues. Alot of crashes the graphics window stops updating - you can still access the file menu and save, but the graphics window doesn't move. For this reason drivers especially video have been updated several times to no avail. You can tell a crash is coming soon when it does this. But TBH I crash more often creating a rectangle and putting a dimension on it. Simple stupid things that it shouldnt crash doing. Both these issues we didn't have in '10. 7. We are on a dell powerconnect 5424 and share a standalone network snap drive Actions
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Andy Sanders Mar 15, 2011 11:52 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Hmmm....#6 seems to indicate a graphics problem somewhere despite the driver. You can pick up a Quadro 580 or 600 fairly cheap these days. It might we worth purchasing just to see if things get better? Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 11:59 AM (in response to Andy Sanders) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
I suspected this as well - solidworks RX says its supported but it wants to revert to a version that has been tested. The previous version (tested) still had the issue so I went with the latest download. But it still does this crash from time to time - the not update gfx window crash - maybe once or twice a day. Actions
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Charles Culp Mar 15, 2011 12:16 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Daniel Krempel wrote: 2. WD 80GB 7200K Sata drives; mine has 40GB free Download Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows: File Name: WinDlg_122.zip http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=614&sid=3&lang=en Make sure your drive isn't having any issues. Set up an automatic schedule to run defrag weekly. Daniel Krempel wrote: 3. No - it reads "Setting the 3GB switch in Windows is another way to stave off the dreaded out-of-memory error message, but use with caution. Activating the 3GB switch can cause performance problems with some graphics cards that have onboard RAM. " As I do not often hit the out-of-memory error, and already having stability issues. Good. Keep it off. If you tempted to turn it on, instead, buy Windows 7 64 bit. Daniel Krempel wrote: 6. Working locally doesn't fix the issues. Alot of crashes the graphics window stops updating - you can still access the file menu and save, but the graphics window doesn't move. For this reason drivers especially video have been updated several times to no avail. You can tell a crash is coming soon when it does this. But TBH I crash more often creating a rectangle and putting a dimension on it. Simple stupid things that it shouldnt crash doing. Both these issues we didn't have in '10. If you are having the graphics area freeze up, that means you have the wrong driver, or the video card is going bad. This is not directly something that SolidWorks can fix. Which driver version are you currently running? Unfortunatly, I have heard a few complaints about the v7700 being quirky. New ATI v3800's are $100 each, and will work well on your 32 bit system. Whatever you do; I don't suggest buying a nicer video card for those old systems running 32 bit XP. Everything nicer than the v3800 will have 1GB of video memory or larger. That will eat up your available memory for SolidWorks and Windows, and that's the last thing you need. Before we resort to video card upgrades, though, let us know what driver version you are running right now. Are these video issues present on both(all) machines, or just yours? Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 2:02 PM (in response to Charles Culp) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Driver Packaging Version 8.773.1-101206a-109991C Provider ATI Technologies Inc. 2D Driver Version 6.14.10.7119 2D Driver File Path System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{F6C386EA-7223-4632-9762-728EC9369880}/0000 Direct3D Version 6.14.10.0779 OpenGL Version 6.14.10.10219 Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.1206.1134.20634 Actions
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Charles Culp Mar 15, 2011 2:28 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Bummer, it looks like the v7700 is no longer supported by SolidWorks. Buying a $100 video card would probably fix your video issues: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195095 Of course, better yet would be to spend $1,600+ on a new Dell Precision T1600 when they come out in the next few weeks. I know my company is buying one for me. Actions
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Matt Lombard Mar 15, 2011 11:25 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
What you see as arrogance is probably just confidence. I use the software enough to know that the software itself is pretty stable. Nothing angers me. I really don't care if you never get it running. That's up to you. How does a not-so-computer-savvy person "know for a fact" that a network wouldn't cause instability? Why don't you bring your files local and do a test. That wouldn't be an older Novell network, by the way, would it? Certain settings on older Novell with several users accessing files will certainly cause crashes. Anyway, best of luck. Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 11:50 AM (in response to Matt Lombard) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
"How does a not-so-computer-savvy person "know for a fact" that a network wouldn't cause instability?" I'm just saying that if you feel someone should be unemployed because they are using solidworks but do not have not an MCSE or an MCSA then it would pain you to know there are many people in this industry who aren't the best with computers and some even have trouble using word or excel. They are not so computer savvy. If you are a talented individual whos currently unemployed, you don't need to take that out on other people. Actions
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Matt Lombard Mar 15, 2011 1:14 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
I'm not unemployed or Microsoft certified. Anyway. In addition to the system related problems that others would like you investigate, those times when I do have a series of crashes, it is usually related to a corrupt file. You can sometimes fix these yourself, but the hard part can be finding the bad data. If the source of the crashes is file specific instead of related to your local systems, then sending your files to someone outside of your group may help you eliminate that from the stack of possible issues. Network, software conflicts (Norton), video and other OS issues are the right place to start. Sometimes it is more work to find the specific issue than it is to just fix it. If I were in your shoes, I would just reformat one machine and install Win 7 Pro, 64 bit and SolidWorks. That's going to be part of the long term solution anyway. If you can afford a new stripped down box, that wouldn't be a bad idea either. Something like http://www.xicomputer.com/products/quote/printQuote.asp?configid=257982&radio=&email=&ccemail1=&ccemail2=&ccemail3= Actions
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John Burrill Mar 15, 2011 12:20 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Daniel, more specifics would be helpful for us to help you help yourself. I'm going to stipulate that Solidworks 2010 ran fine for you with your current hardware and network file system. Now, I'm also running Solidworks 2011 on the same machine and network configuration as I ran 2010 and I'm not having nearly the number of crashes that you're having. I'm running Windows 7 64bit and am pulling all of my file references from the vault and loading them locally, but let's say that's not relevant to your case. Let's look specifically at events surrounding the upgrade First, how did you perform the update to your users: using an adminsitrative image, using the 2011 installation CD, downlaoding the files from the internet, installing on one machine and then creating a disk image, using a differential disk image? Do your machines have at least 15Gb of free disk space to kick around. Solidworks will take 8Gb and you really want 10% of your disk untouched to reduce file fragmentation. Second, what service pack did you deploy (3.0 is in early trials now). Third, did you install Solidworks as a new version or an upgrade Fourth: what's are the Norton Logs saying about Solidworks. There was a problem in 2005 I think where Solidworks would crash on save because McAfee antivirus thought the module that wrote the jpeg thumbnail was malware. Check your virus scanner logs and see if it's recognizing Solidworks modules as malware in a hueristic scan. New release, new DLL's, maybe you've got an interaction. Are you running any kind of registry/file system defender because Solidworks does write to HKEY local machine and does update Windows DLL's and .Net components and if Solidworks can't install or register them correctly it's internal framework will be unstable. Have your network resources and bandwidth changed: at the same time you upgraded Solidworks, did you create a new back-up volume or implement file compression or encryption protocols Are your XP Pro machines on SP3. 2011 wasn't planned to support XP initially because Microsoft ended support for SP2 in April of last year. Any of these factors could contribute to your situation and your best bet is to find the commonality in them, which we can assist with if you Give us specifics of the crashes. You say, crash, crash, crash and "I know for a fact it's not the network." but that's not going to get anyone moving on a solution. What's happening behind the scense on your crashes? Are you using up your RAM? What was said earlier about having 4Gb in a 32bit machine is true. The OS can't address all of it because that 2Gb limit also includes the video memory. If you're video cards have 512Mb onboard, take out a stick of RAM What does your memory consumption and processor usage look like when theses machines are crashing. On a 32Bit OS, Solidworks is on thin ice when the process is using more than 1.4Gb Are your components overheating. Core2Duo CPU's will usually shut down at 75ºC, so if you're seeing sudden computer reboots, that's an indicator. If you're graphics are washing out and you're getting screen repaint issues, that could indicate inadequate GPU cooling. Solidworks has been increasing the load they put on the video card with every release-not just for realview, but also for drawings, animation and interface components-and I'd bet their development team uses Windows 7 64Bit and taht they're taking forgranted it's improved memory management capabilities. Finally, lets talk about the network thing. Anna from Phoenix (runs the user group out there) pulls all of her files through the network and doesn't use PDM and has maintained that Solidworks runs fast and effeciently at her company-but she's spec'd her network hardware very carefully to handle the load and her full-time job is spec'ing machines and switches and creating benchmarks for Solidworks. You could call her an expert on any type of workstation hardware and she runs over the network. So it's not an open/shut case about running over the pipe. However, if you have a 100Mbit switch and 10 users hitting the same disk spindle, you're going to get read errors, collisions and maybe a corrupted ACL, especially if Norton SomethingWorks is second guessing every transaction. You've already characterized the load times for your users as slow. Let me tell you, you need to decide what your priorities are because that slowdown is not without it's own considerable costs in man-hours, lost work and broken concentration. If you think a $10000 fibre switch or striped SCSI array is a hit on the bottom line, think about how much five hours of wasted effort at a $100.00 unit cost per engineer per week for a year is worth? If on of them has to wait 10 minutes each time a large assembly loads, you're losing money on the deal. If you're hearing about 1 Failed-to-save error message a day, you're probably losing the cost of a 64bit upgrade every month. But if the time isn't right to upgrade and your network is slow, don't pull from it. Drop the $500.00 per seat to upgrade your users to Professional so that they have Workgroup PDM and can load references loacally. You will see the difference in stability and performance right away. If Solidworks is hitting the ceiling on your machines, spend $3500.00 to move everyone to a standard Windows 7 64 bit spec. One thing's for sure, calling Solidworks 2011 a turd over and over again is not solving your problem. Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 2:00 PM (in response to John Burrill) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Daniel, more specifics would be helpful for us to help you help yourself. I'm going to stipulate that Solidworks 2010 ran fine for you with your current hardware and network file system. You are correct. We only had a few crashes in 2010 maybe once at best twice a day. Now, I'm also running Solidworks 2011 on the same machine and network configuration as I ran 2010 and I'm not having nearly the number of crashes that you're having. I'm running Windows 7 64bit and am pulling all of my file references from the vault and loading them locally, but let's say that's not relevant to your case. Let's look specifically at events surrounding the upgrade First, how did you perform the update to your users: using an administrative image, using the 2011 installation CD, downlaoding the files from the internet, installing on one machine and then creating a disk image, using a differential disk image? For each major update and service packs, I drive over to the supplier and pick up a hard copy. This is used to upgrade each machine. Do your machines have at least 15Gb of free disk space to kick around. Solidworks will take 8Gb and you really want 10% of your disk untouched to reduce file fragmentation. Second, what service pack did you deploy (3.0 is in early trials now). This is SP2.0 Third, did you install Solidworks as a new version or an upgrade Upgrade existing solidworks Fourth: what's are the Norton Logs saying about Solidworks. The only message from Norton is that it blocks the background downloader from accessing Norton's process data . Have your network resources and bandwidth changed: No Are your XP Pro machines on SP3. 2011 wasn't planned to ... Yes, running on SP3 Any of these factors could contribute to your situation and your best bet is to find the commonality in them, which we can assist with if you Give us specifics of the crashes. I'm not sure what specifics you'd like. I have said, that I crash when dimensioning a sketch. Or trying to print. Or creating a mate. Or clicking on an item while making an assembly drawing. Theres no rhyme, reason or pattern. Yes its crash crash crash. A box pops where I can tell it to restart, send in an error report and theres a space to include what you were doing when it crashed. I most often let it send the error report. The only crash that might be explainable, is when the video stops drawing (see below.) Are you using up your RAM? What was said earlier about having 4Gb in a 32bit machine is true. The OS can't address all of it because that 2Gb limit also includes the video memory. If you're video cards have 512Mb onboard, take out a stick of RAM What does your memory consumption and processor usage look like when theses machines are crashing. On a 32Bit OS, Solidworks is on thin ice when the process is using more than 1.4Gb I rarely see the solidworks process itself exceed 600-700 megs. Right now its using 470. Most of the time it crashes, its not doing anything strenuous. As the examples I gave, it dumps out while dimensioning a sketch.. or adding a mate. Sometimes when trying to printing something. Sometimes it crashes clicking an item in the tree while editing a drawing. Who knows? Then it presents a box asking if you want to send an error report, and a space to describe what you were doing. ... increasing the load they put on the video card with every release-not ... No the CPU nor GPU is overheating. The video card issue is strange. The main display area will just stop. No panning, moving or zooming. No clicking. You can still interact with the tree, or use the file menu to save your work. It often means a crash is coming. Sometimes if you close your work and exit solidworks politely, you can avoid crashing. Finally, lets talk about the network thing. Anna from Phoenix Thats good insight. I think upping the OS would be more feasible to those who make such decisions Actions
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Andy Sanders Mar 15, 2011 2:11 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
"Third, did you install Solidworks as a new version or an upgrade Upgrade existing solidworks" This is usually NOT reccommended at all. Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 2:16 PM (in response to Andy Sanders) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Then why is it a provided option? For face value, its a really simple option too. If you install as a new version, then you either have to cope with multiple version on your PC, remove the old version first or remove the old version afterwards. And in all cases your dealing with registry variables war and some common files. Removing a previous version can damage the newer version - this we learn previously the hard way =( Actions
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Tom Helsley Mar 15, 2011 8:14 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Upgrading from version to version instead of doing a clean install is most likely your biggest culprit. I learned this one the hard way years ago. I also prefer to do that for service packs. Daniel Krempel wrote: Then why is it a provided option? Many of us have asked the same thing. For a couple years now, many of us have been asking for the installer to do a clean uninstall. Supposedly, this is coming out in the 2012 version. Removing a previous version can damage the newer version - this we learn previously the hard way =( If so, then you didn't completely remove the old version. There are most likely some remnants floating around in your registry that also need to be purged. After uninstalling, I also search for SolidWorks related folders anywhere in the "Documents & Settings" folder - under every user, and delete them before installing the new version. Actions
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Kelvin Lamport Mar 15, 2011 10:19 PM (in response to Tom Helsley) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
The new uninstaller is in SW2011. It's mentioned in the link I posted above. There is a new option for SolidWorks 2011 cann Total Uninstall. This will remove the SolidWorks install directories and Window Registry keys under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SolidWorks section. This means your next install will be "clean". No need for batch files or hand editing the Windows Registry. To invoke a total uninstall, right click on the program bar shown below. Thie option for Total Uninstall can be checked to cleanly remove the main program directory and the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SolidWorks keys.
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Anna Wood Mar 16, 2011 1:54 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Daniel, At this point in time I would guess you have some corrupt software be it Windows, SolidWorks or your registry, or some hardware going bad. Or all of the above..... :-) Your video card is a highly likely item to be the culprit since it is no longer supported with a driver. Get yourself a newer card. The problem you will have with your x32 operating system is that most all the latest video cards have 1 gig of video ram. That will surely give you out of memory errors on your x32 bit system. You will want to look at the AMD FirePro V3800 as it only has 512 megs of video ram. Soon you will no longer have a choice with the professional class cards. Nvidia has already gone to 1 gig of video ram on all of their new Quadro offerings. The V3800 is the last card left. Have you opened up the computers recently and cleaned the dust out of them? Are all the fans working? Are you absolutely sure that you do not have hardware that is failing in your systems? It is not out of the realm of possibility that all your computers have one bad piece of hardware that is starting to fail. I am assuming that all your workstations were purchased at the same time thus the high probability of having components from the same lots of manufacture. I recently installed video cards in some of our older workstations, when I opened up the boxes every single video card fan was not working. The computers were all bought at the same time. Once you are sure your hardware is good I would completely wipe the systems clean and re-install everything. Reformat the hard drive and re-install Windows and all your software. We do this on older systems to clean out all the junk that accumulates over the life of a computer. They need to be stripped down and re-freshed every few years. I would also not install the virus software on your systems. Personally Norton, McAfee, etc are worse then the problem they are trying to protect you from. The best virus protection on the planet is between the keyboard and the chair. :-) SolidWorks 2011 is very stable. I have it running well on several computers that are older then yours (P4 vintage cpu's). I have up to date video cards in them with Windows XP x32 for the OS. They are not speed demons but they are stable. Soon I will be installing Windows 7 x64 on these older systems. SolidWorks 2011 does not require it, but my CAM software does. CamWorks 2011 and Esprit 2011 no longer will install on Windows XP systems. We also access all of our data over the network. If you have a good, fast, stable, modern network that the whole company is not trying to access through one pipe then this is not an issue. The big caveat being that you have a good setup with routers, switches and servers. I think you just need to get your IT people to do the work and get your computers up to snuff for the task at hand. It may require a bit of elbow grease to refresh the systems and get them back into proper working order. Then I will bet SolidWorks will be stable on the systems once they are properly configured. Cheers, Anna Actions
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Kelvin Lamport Mar 15, 2011 2:13 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Third, did you install Solidworks as a new version or an upgrade Upgrade existing solidworks That's another likely culprit ... if you mean the SW2011 install upgraded SW2010 instead of installing a separate, new version. https://forum.solidworks.com/docs/DOC-1014 Actions
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Daniel Krempel Mar 15, 2011 2:17 PM (in response to Kelvin Lamport) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Says I'm unauthorized to view that =S Actions
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Kelvin Lamport Mar 15, 2011 4:08 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Can you view this format? https://forum.solidworks.com/docs/DOC-1014.pdf Actions
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Adrian Velazquez Mar 15, 2011 2:28 PM (in response to Kelvin Lamport) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Regardless of it was an upgrade or a new install, my first bet (if the typical solutions don't work) when a machine is this problematic is to do a clean reinstall. To me Hardware and Software shouldn't be treated much differently when it comes to installation. If you install something new and things don't work as they should, the first thing to check is if it was installed correctly, especially if is something "refurbished". Actions
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Jerry Steiger Mar 16, 2011 11:47 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
Daniel, When you crash, do you immediately restart when the box pops up? Someone who seemed to know what he was talking about suggested that people shouldn't do so, that it is safer to log off and back on before starting SW, so that files and memory get cleaned up. It is probably even safer, but takes a little longer, to reboot the system before starting SW up again. I usually follow one of those two procedures and it seems like I don't crash as often as before. But I'm not crashing nearly as often as you are. (There were periods in the past where we did have crashes measuring in double digits per day, but that was quite a while before I quit using the instant restart button.) Jerry Steiger Actions
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Jeff Wierengo Mar 17, 2011 10:28 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
We are currently running SW2011 SP2.0 on Win7x64 and it seems to be the most stable Solidworks yet. One issue that we experienced in the past with windows XP was with the windows page file. When it was set to let windows manage the page file size we would crash many times a day with larger assemblies. By setting the page file size to a larger fixed size we were able to improve stability quite a bit. I also had issues with getting SW2011 to run properly the first installed time I installed it. To solve the problem we needed to be logged onto the machine Solidworks was being installed onto with a network administrator password rather than just a local machine administrator password even though we were doing an individual installation. Not sure if this was due to network licensing but it solved the problem and we have only had a couple of crashes in the last month. Actions
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Howard Carter Mar 17, 2011 10:27 PM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
We have/had this issue. SW 2011 Premium SP2, Brand new HP Z400 w/6gb memory and SW certified Video card.These are specific purpose machines that are NOT networked and DO NOT run any AV so it's all just SW and it's resources. There is a known (by SW) problem and a solution. The below is from another SW forum. I have found this happens most often when going from an assembly to sub-assemblies and back for detailing. If the GDI handles (see below) reach 10,000, SW is done. Closing the assembly is enough to clear the counter. The link below will take you there. The answer is pasted below the link. Sounds like SP3 has the cure, I have not installed it yet. Hope this helps someone out there! https://forum.solidworks.com/community/data_management/blog/feeds/authors/3131
System resources running low ? (a.k.a. GDI handle depletion) inPerformance Posted by Vajrang Parvate Mar 7, 2011 If you are frequently seeing a warning that says "SolidWorks has detected that your system resources are running low" or are seeing the sldworks.exe process using up a large number of GDI handles, please read on. In SolidWorks 2011 SP03, we have addressed three workflows that were known to cause a run up in GDI handle usage and the warning message to appear (possibly followed by a crash in SolidWorks). The forum thread that kicked this off: https://forum.solidworks.com/message/190940. 1. Working on SolidWorks Drawings that have GTOLs (specific to Windows 7): This one came from Lindsay Dalziel from the above thread. We could not reproduce it in house and none of our automated test suites were reporting this failure. It was also reported that the problem did not occur on an older Windows XP 32-bit machine and got dramatically worse on a brand new Windows 7 x64 machine with a much higher configuration. It seemed to happen when GTOLs were present in the drawing and that the problem happened more after actively working on such a drawing for a day. The root cause turned out to be a behavioral change in Windows 7. WinXP recycles DeviceContext handles way more aggressively than Win7 does. So the same piece of code, which was being executed during mouseovers on GTOLs, was working as designed in WinXP, but not on Win7. I apologize for the aggravation this bug has caused and I'm pleased to report that the issue is fixed in SW2011 SP03. 2. Browsing from the File->Open dialog to a folder with a "large" number of SolidWorks files (specific to Windows 7): This one came from Charles Culp from the above thread. This is related to the functionality that shows the thumbnails for SolidWorks files in the Windows Shell, i.e. Windows Explorer, File->Open and File->Save dialogs, etc. and was somewhat trickier than the first issue. The engineering problem here is the tradeoff between performance and cache size. Extracting a thumbnail out of a SolidWorks file can be a potentially expensive operation depending on various things. For example, depending on what your shell settings are (view as list, thumbnails, large/med/small icon, etc.), the handler has to resize the image. Also, file access times affect performance. Imagine browsing to a low-speed network share with a lot of SolidWorks files. The Windows Shell asks the thumbnail handler to extract and return the image in a specific size for EACH file in the folder. Both the shell and the SolidWorks handler has its own techniques of optimizing performance and caching, which sometimes conflict with each other. We have reduced the effect of this issue by capping the amount of images cached by the shell handler. This should reduce the occurrence of the GDI handle depletion issues in such cases. 3. Opening and closing subassemblies / parts from the master assembly (NOT specific to Windows 7): I alluded to this workflow in the above thread. The most common workflow we're aware of that causes GDI handle usage to go up is: opening up part/sub-assembly document(s) from within an assembly by using the "Open Part" or "Open Assembly" command in the feature tree and then later closing the opened document. SolidWorks "holds on" to the GDI handles required for such documents until the master assembly is closed. I also said : The change required in the code to fix this is pretty fundamental to how parts, assemblies and drawings operate with each other in SolidWorks, so it's possible that the fix may cause problems in areas outside of just the core workflow in assemblies, e.g. API, 3rd-party addins, our own addins, hole wizard / dimensions / other GDI-heavy commands, etc. We're taking a cautious approach to this fix, rather than just making the change and hoping for the best. We should have some news around this issue around the 2011 SP03 time frame - please watch this space. The good news: we have a fix for this problem in SW2011 SP03. We have identified and thoroughly tested all the areas of ourcode that this change might affect. However, one area that this change leaves open is the SolidWorks APIs that does anything with document handling (open file, close file, etc.). Since we don't have all the number of macros and addins outside of what we ship, we're making this fix available only via a registry key in SP03. In other words, this fix is "opt-in" for SP03. If you regularly use the "open part/sub-assembly from parent assembly" workflow and are seeing the resources low message, you should immediately see the benefits by turning on the fix as described in the KB article S-054140. If you use any addins, macros, etc. you will be helping us shake out any unknown problems by turning on the fix in SP03. This is optional, of course, but would help us greatly in identifying and getting those issues addressed in SP04. In SP04 and onwards, we are planning to turn the fix on by default and leave a registry option to turn the fix off. In other words, this fix will be "opt-out" in SP04. Finally, a plug for our Early Visiblity Program: You can read more details about the program and sign up here:http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/EarlyVisibility.html . By signing up, you will get early access to SP03 and be able to try out these changes related to GDI handles to try for yourself if they resolve your issue. Actions
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N. V May 15, 2012 3:24 AM (in response to Daniel Krempel) Re: Instability of 2011 and crashes
hello, I have got a similar problem with my copy of Solidworks 2011. I made a weldment frame with 62 parts, but when i update the cut list SW crashes and i have to restart. Also when i try to change the material of all the parts, SW crashes. does anyone know what the problem is here? my specs are: macbook pro 13" Windows 7 X64 running with bootcamp Intel core 2 duo CPU P8800 @ 2,66GHz GeForce 320M. Actions
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