And it crashed again.....

[behindpropellers]

I have been having problems with solidworks crashing. Sadly, this has been happening more since I moved to an approved workstation and video card. I am very frustrated, and have lost a few days worth of work in the past two weeks.

After solidworks crashed a few times I adjusted the backups to save a copy every change. After another crash around lunch today I went back hoping to find a file in there that was recently saved. No such thing.

What else can I do to protect myself from this? I asked my VAR but have not gotten a reply back yet. I wish solidworks had the option to autosave every 10 minutes or something similar.

Any advice? Im frustrated. Now the assembly I was working in has a bunch of mates with problems, including some of the in place mates.

T

 

[ctopher]

Are you the only one there with this problem? Are others having any problems? If it's just you, try: open an assy on your pc that someone else created; do other apps on your pc crash?; or reinstall SW with anti-virus off.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[behindpropellers]

I am the only one here that does the solidworks modeling. SWX was installed before anything else on this computer. Nothing else was installed. I did have the brand new video card in this new computer fail after five days. I wonder if the new video card is not starting to fail again. The video crd is a nvidia 3450 with the latest drivers. I have sent four different requests to support this week, all of them for different problems. I was originally using a laptop, and it crashed less than my new workstation.

Tim

 

[ctopher]

What are the pc specs?

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[behindpropellers]

HP XW 6200
1G Ram
Nvidea 3450
Intel Xeonon 3.2GHZ
Windows XP Pro

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

How big are the files you have open?
Do the crashes happen on a particular file?
When do the crashes happen?
How much RAM & VM are you using when the crashes occur?
The SW site recommends the 7756 driver. Is that the one you are using?


Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091

 

[ctopher]

Looks ok, except I would use 2gb RAM.
When it crashes, is there certain functions you are doing each time? How big is /part/assy? HD or network?

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[behindpropellers]

I am working with assmblies with less than 300 components. All of the crashes have been at different points. None of them were anything I would consider processing intensive. I have the next current driver, should I roll back to the 7756?

Tim

 

[ctopher]

Try changing the setting of the VCard to run SolidWorks, not OpenGL...then restart. If still a problem, then roll back.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[StefanHamminga]

Did you do any testing after install? Some good tests to run to see if your driver combo works properly:

CPU & Memmory:
Stress Prime 2004 (modified Prime95)

http://sp2004.fre3.com/

(run for at least one hour, one application instance per core to make sure heat soak doesn't bite you when, for instance, running cosmos for a day or so later on)

Graphics card:
SPEC Viewperf 8.1:

http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.static/vp81info.html

Hard drive / network:
If you don't trust your hard drive or network you can make a simple script that copies a test file (a cd image or something) to a different file a couple of times (eg. file1->file2->file3->file4), run that script a couple of times (parallel, to simulate heavy load from multiple programs's) and later on do a file compare between file4 and the original. I use a similar (linux) script to verify my server installs, this test really saved my ass once (when a server which was 'working fine' actually had a broken scsi controller).


Be sure to use some kind of hardware monitoring while running these tests. These tests (especially the SP2004) make your cpu generate way more heat than solidworks ever would.

An other thing I noticed with the nVidia Quadro drivers is that on a clean install the newer drivers (>77.xx) seem to preform worthless, but when you run setup again to install the same driver the performance & stability is where it should be!

Also is you hyperthreading enabled? (it should not be!)
This can be confirmed in the task manager, there should be 1 performance graph for each processor core.

These are tests I use to localize the problem (or to conclude it has to do with your solidworks install).


Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer/AI student

 

[behindpropellers]

Thanks for all of the replys. I will go through some stuff on monday and see what I come up with.

THanks

Tim

 

[PDMAdmin]

With SolidWorks shut down, try removing the following registry key (or enlist IT to help you do it):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / SolidWorks

Then restart SolidWorks and see if that give you any more stability. That has worked for me in the past.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Rather than remove it, rename it. That way if it doesn't help, you won't have lost all your settings as you can rename it back to the original.


Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091

 

[kellnerp]

Did you check this:

thread559-150036

http://www.engtran.com

http://www.niswug.org