AutoCAD 2006 constantly shutting down

[kevinc.117928]

I'm at my wit's end.
For several weeks now AutoCAD crashes at any and all commands and even at no command. It's now happening about every half hour or so. I manually save after every 4th command.
It seems to have a mind of it's own. I am not the only one experiencing the problem in our office.
Where do I start?

[mom of 3]

Hey! Sounds very similar to my old computer! Are you using any add-ons? Do you have any layouts set? Viewports? Any other details you can provide?

[davidmatyas]

My suggestions:

a) Make certain your AutoCAD is registered.

b) Make certain that your drive where your temporary files are written has adequate space.

c) Make certain that your NOT editing a 75 meg DWG with 640k of memory.

Lemme know.

[kevinc.117928]

Well, here goes..
I'm using a new Dell with Windows XP in an architectural firm with networked servers. All support files are pathed properly to those servers.
Yes, our drawings are in model space with viewports to different tabs.
Add ons? Such as?
I use Acad tabs.lsp and CDG purge and AutoCAD runs Audit when every drawing is opened.
No weird registered apps. No unreferenced images.
Could this come from old blocks perhaps?

[mom of 3]

Yes, our drawings are in model space with viewports to different tabs.
Are any of the vports clipped?
If you do a recover on any of the drawings, will they open?

[kevinc.117928]

There it goes again.
a)We have all 20+ licensed programs.
b)As I went back into AutoCAD to check (right click/ options) it shutdown with no error message. Temp files and Autosave are written th C:Autosave (plenty of room).
c)75 meg?! No way. This happens on small and large drawings alike. Plenty of memory.

[kevinc.117928]

None of the viewports are clipped.
The drawings usually do not require a recovery to open. They are as good as the last save or qsave.

[mom of 3]

The drawings usually do not require a recovery to open. They are as good as the last save or qsave.I understand that, but try it..........if you can recover it, see if you can audit to see if it gives you any clue of an issue in the drawing itself.

[.T.]

Can you search your drive(s) for files called acad.err? They are just text files that may give a clue as to what is causing your heatburn.

[kevinc.117928]

I can't find any recent acad.err files on the c: drive anywhere.
Shouldn't they be in the log file location specified in the options menu (if they exist)?

[.T.]

I can't find any recent acad.err files on the c: drive anywhere.
Shouldn't they be in the log file location specified in the options menu (if they exist)?

I'm not positive, but I think it's the "Temporary Drawing File Location".

If you don't find any, maybe have a look at the Windoze Event Viewer (right click My Computer/Click Manage/under System Tools expand Event Viewer/ then click on Application. See if there are any Error type events that relate to acad.exe.

[ccowgill]

is it a power exit? (does AutoCAD exit with no warnings, messages, or chances to save?)

[BrenBren]

I'm not positive, but I think it's the "Temporary Drawing File Location".

If you don't find any, maybe have a look at the Windoze Event Viewer (right click My Computer/Click Manage/under System Tools expand Event Viewer/ then click on Application. See if there are any Error type events that relate to acad.exe.

I think they are in the same directory as the drawings, but I might be wrong; then again, you might be able to customize that.. :?

[Avatart]

I had a similar problem with ACAD2005, it would crash out with no notice, no autosave nothing.As you can imagine it got me rather wound up!

The solution turned out to be very simple (I hope it works for you too), there was a buffer overrun in the ProjectPath variable (limit 500 chars, I think). If you are using long directory names or UNC pathing, this can easily happen. Change your Xrefs to relative pathing and change the ProjectPath to "." (a dot).

[kevinc.117928]

A power exit? Yes. Just happened again.
No warning, no error message.
I have checked the Event Viewer and found nothing from the time of the crash or Autocad related.

[Avatart]

A power exit? Yes. Just happened again.
No warning, no error message.
I have checked the Event Viewer and found nothing from the time of the crash or Autocad related.That is a buffer overflow crash. Just winks out, yes? No warning, no error message, no sv$ files.

[.T.]

A power exit? Yes. Just happened again.
No warning, no error message.
I have checked the Event Viewer and found nothing from the time of the crash or Autocad related.

In Chris' absence, I think he is refering to THIS (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=25893) and THIS (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=23901). Maybe they can help you along.

[kevinc.117928]

I will not lay down to these demons!
I've turned off the Windows firewall temporarily and am testing as the link suggests. However, I don't really like being this security vulnerable.

With regard to the buffer overflow, are you refering to the Project Fles Sarch Path in the Options/ Files menu? Xref paths too?
I am pathed to our servers. Some of the longer paths can get up to about 100 charecters, but nowhere near 500. However, I may test this anyway by switching to relative paths. I think I've read somewhere before that 500 charecters is the max also.
Thanks for all the input.

[Railrose]

I've heard mention that Internet Explorer 7.0 will crash a lot of the programs our company is running & that ACAD may be one of them. Corp won't let us run it.

[kevinc.117928]

So much for that. I just got a "Power Exit" with the windows firewall off.

[.T.]

So much for that. I just got a "Power Exit" with the windows firewall off.

A shot in the dark: Do you have .NET 2.0 installed?

[kevinc.117928]

Net 2.0 is installed. Looks like there's a 3.0 available.
I have not heard that about Internet Explorer 7.0. We just upgraded to it last month but the AutoCAD issues superceeded the upgrade. Thanks.

[.T.]

Net 2.0 is installed. Looks like there's a 3.0 available.
I have not heard that about Internet Explorer 7.0. We just upgraded to it last month but the AutoCAD issues superceeded the upgrade. Thanks.

.NET 2.0 has been known to cause various problems with 2006. And, unless you are running 2007, I would drop back to 1.1 and see if it helps.

I also ended up uninstalling IE7 because of various and assorted problems I encountered (thanks for the reminder, Jane).

HTH

[kevinc.117928]

Well, I uninstalled Microsoft.Net Framework 2.0 and am running the previously installed 1.1 with Hotfix. It's been 2 hours and haven't crashed yet.
I won't jump to conclude that is the fix that I need... yet. But if and when I do there will be alot of bowing and compliments on the magnitude of your grey matter. Thanks.
I'll keep you all posted. Until then have a great weekend.
BTW Palmer Alaska, huh? I know some Phoenician transplants from there. Small world.

[.T.]

Well, I uninstalled Microsoft.Net Framework 2.0 and am running the previously installed 1.1 with Hotfix. It's been 2 hours and haven't crashed yet.
I won't jump to conclude that is the fix that I need... yet. But if and when I do there will be alot of bowing and compliments on the magnitude of your grey matter. Thanks.
I'll keep you all posted. Until then have a great weekend.
BTW Palmer Alaska, huh? I know some Phoenician transplants from there. Small world.

~fingers crossed for you~

I hope it works out. Thanks for the update, and yes, please keep us posted.

I don't know a lot of people in Palmer, yet, as I moved there less than a year ago, but maybe I'll run into the Phoenicians sometime (hopefully not on the highway :) ). It's a pretty small town.

Have a good one...

[Opie]

~fingers crossed for you~

I hope it works out. Thanks for the update, and yes, please keep us posted.

I don't know a lot of people in Palmer, yet, as I moved there less than a year ago, but maybe I'll run into the Phoenicians sometime (hopefully not on the highway :) ). It's a pretty small town.

Have a good one...
.Net seems to break a lot of things along with the new IE version. Hopefully, that is the necessary solution

[Avatart]

I will not lay down to these demons!

With regard to the buffer overflow, are you refering to the Project Fles Sarch Path in the Options/ Files menu? Xref paths too?
I am pathed to our servers. Some of the longer paths can get up to about 100 charecters, but nowhere near 500. However, I may test this anyway by switching to relative paths. I think I've read somewhere before that 500 charecters is the max also.
Thanks for all the input.It is not the Project File Search Path, although I think they have a buffer of around 132 chars each (could be wrong, that was from memory) but the ProjectName variable (I know I said ProjectPath before, my bad memory playing tricks).

The ProjectName variable creates a registry entry that calls paths for unpathed Xrefs and Images, this is the buffer that overflows causing the dumping out of AutoCad, I have had this happen to alot of my users. Just type it in and change it to "." (a full stop) and it should make your problem go away. Make sure that you do not have a third party app redefining it each time you start up AutoCad. This is what I had and it drove me as nuts as it must be driving you.

Good Luck!

[ccowgill]

I had a similar problem with ACAD2005, it would crash out with no notice, no autosave nothing.As you can imagine it got me rather wound up!

The solution turned out to be very simple (I hope it works for you too), there was a buffer overrun in the ProjectPath variable (limit 500 chars, I think). If you are using long directory names or UNC pathing, this can easily happen. Change your Xrefs to relative pathing and change the ProjectPath to "." (a dot).I am now running AutoCAD2007 and I am probably going to jinx myself, but I have not had a power exit since I switched to Multiple Drawing Interface. we dont use the ProjectName variable at this current point in time so I dont think it would be that one variable causing the problem

[kevinc.117928]

Well, here we go again.
Yesterday I had several Power Exits. Today I've had three in 19 minutes and one shutdown that generated an error report. I can't even work for five minutes straight!??
Apparently the .net was not the issue.
Project name is "." has had no effect either. I just changed the Project Files Search Path to "empty" and got another "Power Exit".
I've been on AutoCAD since release 14 and never experienced anything like this. Can it be network related?

BTW, The Relative Path option is not available if the referenced drawing is located on a different local disk drive or on a network server. From AutoCAD help.
All of our files are on a network server.

[ccowgill]

what is SDI set to, if it is at 1, try 0 for a while

[.T.]

one shutdown that generated an error report.

Sorry to hear you're still having problems :(

Did you happen to see what the error report said; can you post it?

[kevinc.117928]

SDI was set to 0. However, when 1 was tried I got " cannot set SDI to this value.
ACADLSPASDOC is at 1.

[kevinc.117928]

I can't find it now. I browsed through it and couldn't make anything out. I'm sure it'll happen again though.

[.T.]

Another thought: Does your company use WSUS (windoze automatic update service)? Did 2.0 get pushed back out to your machine?

[kevinc.117928]

No, .net 2.0 is not showing up in add remove programs.

[Avatart]

SDI was set to 0. However, when 1 was tried I got " cannot set SDI to this value.
ACADLSPASDOC is at 1.I am confused here, why does AutoCad have a problem reloading the Acad.lsp and having SDI on 1? All that means is that the drawing startup lisp won't load each time you open a new drawing, will SDI 1 work if you turn off demand loading of Acad.lsp?

[kevinc.117928]

Just to update...
Last week I removed "Acad tabs.lsp" and have had noticably fewer power shutdowns.

[SRBalliet]

How about moving the files you are working on to your local drive. If it does or doesn't crash, you can learn if it is or isn't network related.

[Railrose]

How about moving the files you are working on to your local drive. If it does or doesn't crash, you can learn if it is or isn't network related.
I have to do that because corporate changed servers & slowed things down. The bigger the files, the more important it is for me to work locally.

[Rob_Miller]

This maybe a little late ... but do you have the Dynamic Input option turned on? Here at my office we were having major problems with 2006 crashing out because it was turned on. I've told our users to use no more than one input tracking option at the most ... most have just turned it off though and we haven't had any problems until they accidentally turn it back on.

Rob

[dervin]

One thing that was causing our AutoCAD 2005 to crash was our On-Access Virus Scan. To test it, temporarily disable you virus scan software. We were able to add the AutoCad file types and folders to an exclusion list in the virus scan software to solve the problem. Everytime we accessed a command, the virus software would scan the operation and caused AutoCAD to wait. AutoCAD does not like to wait and will crash if temporarily paused during certain operations. It's worth a try.

[Avatart]

One thing that was causing our AutoCAD 2005 to crash was our On-Access Virus Scan. To test it, temporarily disable you virus scan software. We were able to add the AutoCad file types and folders to an exclusion list in the virus scan software to solve the problem. Everytime we accessed a command, the virus software would scan the operation and caused AutoCAD to wait. AutoCAD does not like to wait and will crash if temporarily paused during certain operations. It's worth a try.I have had very similar experiences, especially with McAfee VirusScan.

[calgmin]

In the past, I've run into problems where autocad would mysteriously shut down after a few commands like you've described. The fix I found was that Defpoints was turned off or frozen. When on or thawed, it worked fine. This was a while back when working in 2005 or earlier, and haven't run into the problem since. Usually when we're running into problems, that'll be the first thing I check - if Defpoints/Layer 0 are off/frozen. Sometimes it's all that is needed. Good luck.

-Chris