Install of product design suite 14 breaks AutoCAD Mechanical 2013?

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know what to do about the install of product design suite 2014 breaking priduct design suite mechanical desktop AutoCAD won't finish starting if 2014 has been started since bootup. 

I have only had the update one day, so I don't know about all the problems yet, but this one is a show stopper.

I did find that a reboot would clear out hre problem and let Autocad mechanical 2013 work again, but as soon as I have started AutoCAD mechanical 2014 since bootup then 2013 won't finish starting anymore (with 2014 closed of course).

[Anonymous]

Update:  After a filure to load 2013 I looked in task manager and see that the product design suite 2014 does not fully shut down (ever?).  But if I manually clear out the left over Autodesk components first, then when I try to start AutoCAD 2013 mechanical desktop (after having started 2014 and closed ) 2013 is finally able to work again.  Specifically I had to close (kill) AcCloudManager.exe and AdSync.exe and anything else that started with "Auto" in the description field.

This workaround is not too painful once you know what to do.  But really, did no one consider users wanting to open the previous version during the transition from one version to the next?  Sigh.

[Anonymous]

After a couple of days, with absolutely NO CHANGES by me, the problem seems to have gone away:  I can now open AutoCAD mechanical 2014, close it and then open AutoCAD 2013 without it hanging on startup.  When I reported this (the first day) it was happening every time I tried to open AuroCAD mechanical 2013 and the only thing I could do the reset the problem was reboot the computer.  I later figured out I could close the leftover Autodesk 2014 applications running in task manager to allow Autodesk 2013 to start, but it was still necessary to do at least that.  Today the problem is not happening and I am pretty sure I have changed absolutelly nothing.  I suspose a Windows Update could have happened in the background, or an unseen Autodesk update could have occured.  There have been a few 'cold boots' since then (as opposed to 'warm boots') maybe that was involved.

In any event the problem seems to have gone away, or maybe it is just intermittant.

[Anonymous]

Opps, spoke too soon.  The problem just re-occurred.  After starting AutoCAD mechanical 2014 and closing it down (and then waiting a few minutes for 'good luck') I tried to open AuutoCAD mechanical 2013.  It hangs before it finishes starting up and then must be killed with task manager (clicking on the red X in the task bar icon does not work)

Trying to restart AutoCAD 2013 also fails if I try it again (after killing it). But, as I mented before, opening task manager and closing the Autodesk leftover applications like Adsync.exe, AcSettingSync.exe, etc solves the problem and lets AutoCAD mechanical 2013 open normally.

Since this doesn't 'always' happen maybe if I waited long enough after shutting down AutoCAD mechanical 2014 it would prevent the problem.  I did already wait 'a few minutes' so it is unclear if that could be a real workaround even if it works.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I found that product design suite defaults the AutoCAD 360 Sync feature to ON (it seems to think it is OK to copy all your working  files and configuration up to some location on the internet).  I disabled that in AutoCAD mechanical 2014  (it was already disabled in 2013) and the problem seems to have gone away.  I can now toggle between AutoCAD mechanical 2013 and 2014 without any obvious issues.  I did notice it takes many 10s of seconds for AutoCAD to "close",  I have always been letting the active version close before attempting to start a different version.  I assume this means the SYNCing of configuration settings does not work between versions.  I would have expected it to check the version of the saved settings before attempting to use them.  In any event this has solved my problem with migrating to the new 2014 suite.   BTW, I have very fast internet access, 65 Mb/s download and 12 Mb/s upload, so speed of the internet connection was not the issue.