Consistent crashes Revit 2010

[luke.s.johnson]

We have 3 PCs running Revit 2010.

2 of them run fine - no real crashing.

The other one is consistently crashing. We have tried reinstalling, correcting event log errors, auditing and purging affected files. Still crashes.

Anyone experiencing this? Any ideas?

[luke.s.johnson]

It definitely seemed to improve when the user stopped using multiple instances of Revit.

Could this be a VSTA issue? Something to do with Visual Studio?

[dbaldacchino]

Update your video drivers and try turning off/on Direct3D hardware acceleration.

[clog boy]

I'm wondering, do ribbons use generic Microsoft libraries? If so could you run command sfc /scannow? (sfc = system file check) If ribbons solely rely on Autodesk proprietary dll files then ignore this message.

[patricks]

I have had consistent crashes with hardware acceleration turned on, despite my video card supporting DirectX 9.1. I have tried several different drivers with no success.

[btrusty]

my 2009 crashes randomly, but its an nvidia openGL driver (error 12)
no one here posted back to my problem and nvidia has been lackluster in getting back to me.

its been happening with their 18x.xx drivers, but moving back to the 8x.xx reduces performance too much.

[douggodfrey]

I got about a dozen crashes in the first hour of using it but since then, it's been quite stable. Fiddled with acceleration setting with no noticable differences at the time. I'm on Vista 64 FWIW.

[patricks]

my 2009 crashes randomly, but its an nvidia openGL driver (error 12)
no one here posted back to my problem and nvidia has been lackluster in getting back to me.

its been happening with their 18x.xx drivers, but moving back to the 8x.xx reduces performance too much.

Have you tried the 162.65 driver, which is Autodesk certified for use with Revit?

I rarely ever have crashing issues with 2009, and I run it with OpenGL hardware acceleration turned on, with an nVIDIA Quadro FX550 128MB graphics card.

[btrusty]

Have you tried the 162.65 driver, which is Autodesk certified for use with Revit?

I rarely ever have crashing issues with 2009, and I run it with OpenGL hardware acceleration turned on, with an nVIDIA Quadro FX550 128MB graphics card.

ill have to try that, i have been using the autocad driver from nvidia (dont know what they are doing differently between the different revisions of the driver: autocad, performance, 3dsmax, standard.

i think its more that ive got dual lcd and have autocad on one and revit on the other... dont think it likes that one bit.

[clog boy]

Did you tear off many ribbons?

Known issues says


Ribbon
• Pulling off many Ribbon panels into independent floating windows may cause Revit to crash during startup. The number of panels that can be safely pulled off is dependent on operating system, video card, and possibly other factors. To fix the issue, the UI state can be reset to default settings by removing the UIState.dat file by browsing to the appropriate product folder located in one of the following locations:
o For Windows® XP:
%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\Revit\
o For Windows Vista®:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Autodesk\Revit\

[saeborne]

Have you tried the 162.65 driver, which is Autodesk certified for use with Revit?

I rarely ever have crashing issues with 2009, and I run it with OpenGL hardware acceleration turned on, with an nVIDIA Quadro FX550 128MB graphics card.

Hi Patrick,

Can you please point me to where you found the information that AutoDesk certified the 162.65 Driver?

It's not that I don't believe you, I certainly do... I'd like to know where so I can find similar info in the future. Also, where can I download older drivers? As far as I can tell, Nvidia.com only offers the option for the 182.46 Driver.

Thanks,
Bryan

<edit> I found the Archive Driver Button... Duh... </edit>

[cphubb]

Been pretty stable here Quadro NVS 110 with hrdwe accel turned on. Got a wierd crash yesterday when I clicked twice on the Application menu. Revit just dissapeared. No error or warning. Otherwise no crashes so far

[patricks]

http://www.nvidia.com/page/partner_certified_drivers.html

Revit is listed in the Autodesk section, with 162.65 as the driver versions for XP 32 and 64, and Vista 32 and 64.

Note that I have dual monitors and I run Revit 2009 and AutoCAD 2008 at the same time, one on each monitor, with no issues at all.

[dbaldacchino]

I don't understand what the 162.65 means. I have an Nvidia Quadro FX 2700M on my laptop and I just updated the driver from the Dell site in April and my version is 7.15.11.7950

[azmz3]

I am running RAC 2009 on a dual monitor system, i can have ACA 2009 and RAC 2009 on both screens at the same time, with no issues, my video driver is 182.46 and video card is nVidia Quadro FX 3700 512 mb DirectX Ver. 10

[gwnelson]

Dave, Nvidia uses the last 5 digits to ID the driver - in your case 175.xx. Have you visited the Nvid site for drivers?

[gwnelson]

Oops - 179.50

[dbaldacchino]

They don't support laptop cards. This came directly from the Dell support site.

[luke.s.johnson]

Not many ribbons were torn off.

And it didn't seem to matter if Hardware acceleration was on or off.

The user did find it better when using only one instance (rather than multiple instances of Revit).

CCleaner picked up some weirdness to do with .NET, so I reinstalled (repair install) .NET 3.5 from the Autodesk installation folder on C:\ drive.

I also installed .NET 1.1 using Windows Update.

And I saved the various .DWG links (from the RVT files that were mainly crashing - there were about 5 DWG links in them) to 2010 DWG version.

There has not been a crash yet this morning - let's see what happens as the day goes on.

[iankids]

Whilst it may not relate to this problem whatsoever, I found that one of the problems I was having, which caused Revit to be somewhat unstable, was rectified when I unistalled AutoCad 2010 Architecture.

For me, the two programs come as part of my subscription, & whilst I now only use AutoCad when I have no other alternative, I have always tended to load the latest version with the upgrade of Revit.

Cheers,


Ian

[luke.s.johnson]

The user is still experiencing crashes and instability.

Could this relate to system requirements at all?

[dbaldacchino]

Make sure they all have the same windows updates installed, together with updated video drivers. Are the 3 PCs identical (specs such as RAM, Video, OS, etc)?

[luke.s.johnson]

http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.com/2010/03/ribbon-tab-tearoff-crash-fix-here.html

[mthurnauer]

We are working on a project in revit 2010 where two people are on 64 bit machines with windows 7 and one person is on a 32 bit machine with XP. The XP box crashes many times per day. Does the mix of people working on 32x and 64x have anything to do with the problem?

[cliff collins]

Mixing XP 32 and Win 7 strictly from and OS/ Networking aspect is not recommended,
but it will work.

However, once a large Revit model ( let's say 250 MB or more ) is in the mix, there can definately be issues. Or if there are several linked models that add up to 200 plus MB.

The Win 7 64 bit machines with lots of ram--say 8-16 GB, can save a large Revit project,
but the 32 bit XP machine will not be able to open or save to central.

Thus, mixing 32 and 64 bit OS on a Revit project is not recommended.

Learned this the hard way, and have since upgraded all machines to Win 7 64
w/ 8GB ram min. and Win Server 2008 64 bit.

cheers

[mthurnauer]

Our central file is 150mb and there is are two links, one is 60mb and the other is 40mb. We had looked at the peek use on his computer and it was about 1.5gb and the computer has 3gb. My IT does not think it is a memory issue, which was my initial assumption. The IT thinks that it is just the mix of 32bit and 64bit on the same project. I don't see how that by itself could be the problem.

[Scott D Davis]

Our central file is 150mb and there is are two links, one is 60mb and the other is 40mb. We had looked at the peek use on his computer and it was about 1.5gb and the computer has 3gb. My IT does not think it is a memory issue, which was my initial assumption. The IT thinks that it is just the mix of 32bit and 64bit on the same project. I don't see how that by itself could be the problem.

On a 150mb model with 60 and 40mb links, and only 3 gigs of ram on a 32 bit system, this is most likely a memory problem. There should be no issue with mixing 32 and 64 bit on the same project. Just that the 64 bit Win7 boxes handle memory much better, and probably have more ram to begin with.

[cliff collins]

150 + 60 + 40 = 250 MB x 20 = 5 GB memory required just to run the Revit models--
n.i.c. OS and other apps.

So--the 32 bit machines, even with 3G switch will not be able to handle this project
w/ 4 GB RAM.

Therefore--mixing 32 bit and 64 bit is a problem, due to memory limitations and insufficiency.

cheers

[mthurnauer]

Just wondering it the quick numbers for memory requirements is specific to 2010? My last project was 95mb central + 65mb MEP + 35mb structural. We were all using 2009 and I think everyone was on 32 bit machines and we had no problems that I can recall.

[ron.sanpedro]

Our central file is 150mb and there is are two links, one is 60mb and the other is 40mb. We had looked at the peek use on his computer and it was about 1.5gb and the computer has 3gb. My IT does not think it is a memory issue, which was my initial assumption. The IT thinks that it is just the mix of 32bit and 64bit on the same project. I don't see how that by itself could be the problem.

I would state categorically, mixed environments of x32 and x64 are NEVER the DIRECT problem. If a project can be worked on in x32, it can be worked on in a mixed environment. If the project is too large for a x32 machine, then it is too large for an x32 machine, and the presence of x64 machines has nothing to do with the x32 machine failing. If all three teams members had x32, I bet they would all crash, thus the mixed team isn't the issue. Hell, test that by just working on the x32 machine for a while with the x64 machines not accessing Central. No x64 "active" and you will still likely crash. Turn off the x64 machines if you have to to feel confident in the test.

That said, does the computer have 3GB of physical RAM, or 4GB and you have the 3GB switch applied and thus the reference to 3GB? If the latter, and you also have a graphics card with more than 256MB of RAM, then the problem could be lack of kernel address space due to the mapping of the video RAM and the 3GB switch limiting kernel address space to only 1GB. Research using the USERVA switch to fine tune user/kernel address space allocation. I have found 2800 to be a good place to start.
Also, check the settings on Virtual memory. Is it managed by Windows or a static size? If static, is it at least as much as the physical RAM, maybe even double? Does the hard drive have plenty of room, and is not fragmented? I have seen older machines with only a 40GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM and basically no room for Windows to properly manage an 8GB swap file, especially without fragmenting. A quick test/fix is to just throw an old (empty) drive in the machine and set Windows to use a static swap file on that drive, sized to double the physical RAM. Probably not the issue, but could be. You can also just look at the PF Usage graph in Task Manager. I have seen XP x32 crash when Page File usage approached 140% of physical RAM, even when the page file is set to 200%. I think that XP doesn't like one app using too much of the page file, which is a shared resource, and some tasks (DWG export for example) are RAM hog tasks, so Revit could get to the point of monopolizing that shared resource.

Also, make sure that all Revit users have the same build number. Different build numbers of the same "bitness" can be a problem, Different "bitness" and the same build number, no problem. And verify that the issue is still there if you turn off hardware acceleration. Likely that has already been mentioned here, but I will mention it again.

But I will bet that, given that the x64 machines are fine and the x32 machine isn't, there is a memory problem. Even if the x64 machines have the same amount of physical RAM as the x32 machine, this can still be the case. If the office has already sprung for new computers for 2/3 of the team, why not just buy the third and be done with it? ;)

best of luck,
Gordon