Autodesk 2013 LT crashes randomly

[ThePatHammon]

Someone at my office is running Autocad LT 2013 and is experiencing fairly random crashes. Common things that trigger crashing include plotting lines and trying to exit the program.

He is set up as an administrator and his computer definitely meets the programs minimum requirements.

I've tried installing the latest video card driver and installing the latest service pack for the program.

Here is the Eventviewer entry from his latest crash

Faulting application name: acadlt.exe, version: 25.0.55.0, time stamp: 0x4f30acc6

Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.3.9600.16408, time stamp: 0x523d5305

Exception code: 0xc0000374

Fault offset: 0x00000000000f387c

Faulting process id: 0xf2c

Faulting application start time: 0x01cfb33bd0a640da

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD LT 2013\acadlt.exe

Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll

Report Id: 06a0c885-1f32-11e4-be73-180373e3b968

Faulting package full name:

Faulting package-relative application ID

His computer is a dell xps 8300 from 2010

It's has a first gen i7-2600, 16 gigs of ram and an nVidia GeForce GT 545 graphics card

[ThePatHammon]

Also I've run some basic hardware diagnostics and didn't find any apparent issues.

And it might relevent to mention he is running a dual monitor setup

[rkmcswain]

Is the LT2013 fully up to date with all the SP and hotfixes?
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad-lt/downloads#?cg=Downloads&p=AutoCAD%20LT&v=2013&sort=...

Maybe try turning off hardware acceleration if it's enabled.
That video card is not recommended or certified
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?siteID=123112&id=18844534

Check this out also:
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Program-crashes-using-ran...

[ThePatHammon]

Thank you for your response, very helpful. I guess I'll find out from the user if his AutoCAD has crashed as long as he's used it with that graphics card or if its something that just suddenly started happening recently. If it's always happened I'll see what I can do about getting him a new card.

[ThePatHammon]

Actually I realize that AutoCAD LT doesn't actually have any graphics card prerequisits as its not the full 3D version of autoCAD. If I understand this correctly it should work on any card with sufficient power which i imagine the GT 545 should have.

Would I be correctly that graphics card is unlikely to be cause of the crashing?

[rkmcswain]

AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT are essentially the same application except that certain components are not enabled in LT.  The bare minimum graphics hardware requirements/suggestions would be the same AFAIK. You're right about not needing a super powerful one for normal LT type work, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be the cause.

At the very least, I would make sure the PC has the latest video card drivers, Windows is up to date, AutoCAD LT is fully patched, etc. to rule all this out as a cause.   As a general rule, I would say that graphics cards and/or their drivers are responsible for their fair share of AutoCAD crashing problems - but it could really be just about anything.

Also make sure the users %temp% directory is not "full". IOW, clean it up. I've seen where a %temp% directory contained tens of thousands of files and this caused major slow downs of AutoCAD and probably contributed to crashes. It's a cheap fix to look at.

Let me tag @pendean - he is an LT expert 🙂

[pendean]

All excellent points: as a general rule of thumb, treat LT as AutoCAD when it comes to hardware specs, including video cards, and you can't go wrong.
OR skip the fancy-pants specs altogther: lots of LT users running LT with an Intel motherboard video card with no issues at all.

[ThePatHammon]

If people have good luck using onboard intel graphics I guess I'll try simply removing the graphics card. He has an i7 so the onboard video should be pretty decent.

[pendean]

Check your product literature first 🙂

[ThePatHammon]

Just to give an update to anyone who might read this

The dude's autocad worked fine for another day but then finally crashed again. I did a file sfc scan and found some uncorrectable issues so I'm going to run a repair install to fix the broken files and i'm also going to pull his graphics card out and make him use his onboard. We'll know if this worked out mid next week some time