Is Sync causing fatal errors to reoccur

[Anonymous]

I have been fighting this for a week now and have gone to great extremes to try and resolve the problem, as I really would like to stay with the 'classic' icons. At this point I believe I caused the problem by importing my archieved workspace profile from our local server. Unfortunately, said profile was created and exported (saved) from a previous version of Factory Suite and/or mechanical AC (I am not sure which).

With the steps I have taken, I am (at this time) thinking that cloud 360 (sync) is somehow holding the error and reloading it when I reinstall, but I am obviously not sure.

I have a dual 6-core PC with 2 solid state drives arranged in Raid 0. I have 12 gig of memory running windows 7 OS in 64 bit, Nvidia Quadro 5000 video card.

The following is a list of the steps taken to date:

1.  Loaded Factory Suite 2013 without installing tools first. Did not check settings on each application. installed all programs displayed on 'install' tab.Left Trend anti-virus (and all standard start-up programs) running.Installation appeared to go well and I 'think' I started a few or the programs a couple times. I engaged mechanical, and started walking through my normal routing of setting preferences in options. Imported previous profiles as mentioned above. Worked on a drawing and eventually closed program.

2. Attempted to reopen mechanical and received fatal error. Reattempted several times and error code seemed to change almost everytime. 

3. Contacted support by phone and waited for call back. Several hours later was told I should not of imported the previous version profiles and told about the reset to original settings icon in mechanical folder. I reset the settings and mechanical reopened properly.

4, Once I was in I immediately deleted the imported profile and created a new classic workspace and saved it as my new profile.

5. I closed and reopened mechanical again and fatal error reappeared. I reset the settings, reopened again, left it in standard mechanical work space, closed and it reopened properly. Opened again, created a new classic work space, saved it, then exported it to our server, replacing my old profile. Closed, Reopened, and fatal error was back.

6. I uninstalled the entire suite (without researching the proper uninstall procedure) and reinstalled the entire suite. Opened Mechanical, set up the new classic workspace, closed, reopened and fatal error reoccured. I reset the settings, opened again, and decided to leave it in standard mechanical workspace, opened a drawing and noticed it took 6 times the normal rate to open and close the drawing, and there was a diffent conflict or problem as AC was not acting  properly.

At this point I started taking drastic actions. I loaded the same 2013 Factory Suite onto one of our laptops and everything worked perfectly. I could open Mechanical, change the work space to Classic, close and reopen without any errors or delays. This convinced me I had caused the problem originally by loading the old version workspace profile.   

7. I researched proper uninstall procedures, followed them step by step, including deletion of Register folders, etc. Reinstalled, reopened, reestablish workspace manually, saved work space, closed, reopened, and fatal error came back. Note that the delay in opening and closing a drawing (conflict) was stll there as well when I reset and reopened using standard mechanical settings.  

8. I uninstalled again (properly) and this time I took one of our 2013 Product Suites and loaded it instead of the Factory Suite. Unbelievably, the problem(s) all came back, with fatal errors after setting to classic, and the delays in opening and closing drawings in standard mechanical workspace.

9. I uninstalled product suite, emptied my recycle bin, cleaned-up my disk using Windows clean-up tool, searched for any folder referencing AutoDesk or AutoCad, reinstalled Factory Suite, and all to no avail.

10. Thursday I ran a complete diagnostics on my machine (several hours) and everything checked out perfectly.

11. Yesterday I called in our IT tech in and we checked everything he could think of, the machine, the settings, etc.and all appeared to be in good condition. During one of the reboots, we signed onto the PC using his sign-on name and password in Windows start-up screen. We checked the Mechanical and the delays in opening and closing drawings (conflict) was gone. We rebooted, signed in under my name, and check Mechanical and the delays were there.

12. We uninstalled factory again, cleaned the machine totally of register folders, Autocad files and folders, etc. (he even used a tool (program) he had to totally remove all wasted register setting. Went way overboard to check everything then we renamed my windows user folder so that when I signed in Windows would create a new folder. We rebooted, reinstalled factory and it worked. I opened Mechanical switched to classic, closed, reopened and it opened. I did it again and the dang fatal error came back. We discussed the next step being to completely format the PC and reload the operating system but I pulled the plug and said this is rediculous and I have had enough.

I am home today (Saturaday) and just thought that we did not go back and sign in as Chris (IT) again to see if the problem is gone under his name and I am going to the office to try that. If the problem is gone under his name, I will be totally convinced that "Sync" is holding the error in my setting profiles for use in cloud and it keeps dumping the error back into my machine.

Does anyone have any ideas or help?

Thanks

Dave

[BudACAD]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for posting all the details.  It almost sounds like something is getting messed up when you migrate your settings.   You have a couple options here. 

Sign out of Sync so that nothing is getting synced.  

Reset your Settings and don't migrate your old settings.  You need to resolve what is causing the crash here first.  

Now Run AutoCAD Mechanical and verify that the workspaces are working as expected.   You can even Export your settings at this point and save them.  

If everything is working, you can now sign into Sync.  But say NO if it prompts you to download your custom settings.  They won't get pushed down unless you say yes.   Make a couple changes to AutoCAD and you should get promted to upload your new settings.   These should overwrite what was orginally pushed up to the WEB Site. Exit AutoCAD and start it again to see how it goes.  

If you no longer see the crash on startup, then you would want to try and figure out what is getting corrupted when you migrate your settings.   And if you know what you want to migrate, don't use the Migration Wizard, but instead use the Transfer Tab in the CUI Editor for the menus and you can manually copy any PGP, LIN and or PAT files you have.  

Last but not least uninstalling will not solve a corrupt profile.  Because these settings are considered user customizable, they will not get removed by an uninstall.   That is why Reset Settings fixed this for you.  Also be very careful using a registry cleaner, they get very aggressive and remove registry keys that should not be removed.   That can also lead to issues when you try and run AutoCAD and AutoCAD based products.  

Hope this helps at least get you back up and running.  

Bud Schroeder

Autodesk Inc.