2000i AADr3 Fatal Error Unhandled e06d7363h Exception

[Eco_Architect]

I've spent the better part of a day resolving and out-of-the-blue fatal error with my AutoCad 2000i (AADr3) software.

My software is installed on a laptop running Windows 7 Professional, Service Pack 1. For the record, it has run successfully for years using compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 3), as an Administrator.

The problem began suddenly and apparently without provocation when starting AutoCad, with an error dialogue box reporting, "Fatal Error: Unhandled e06d7363h Exception..." Selecting the "OK" button simply shut down the application. Very frustrating.

I had recently run a checkdisk routine on my main drive (C:), which did find some bad sectors, so I suspected that repairs related to that might have been responsible. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information online suggesting that that might be the case. In the end, that line of thinking was a red herring.

Subsequent online searches suggested that e06d7363h is a general error code with no specific solution. However, another topic post on this community suggested that it might be related to a registry key. I searched about a bit but didn't find a similar key entry in my registry, so opted not to mess with the registry, which can be a risky endeavor.

Then I remembered that I had successfully opened AutoCad yesterday. To make a long story short, the issue turned out to be AutoCad's RECENT FILE LIST. I had been working with several archive drawing files that were stored on a remote drive, in this case drive H:. My regular project file drive is P:.

The fix was to use Windows' Registry Editor (Start > search/open Regedit) and search and delete the H: drive-based files from the recent file list. (This doesn't appear possible to do within Acad 2000i.) I found them in HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / Autodesk / AutoCAD / R15.0 / ACAD-12:409 / Recent File List. Four of the five recent files were located on my remote H: drive, which was not consistently available. AutoCad opened fine (see paragraph above) when I had that drive connected and turned on but generated the fatal error when it wasn't available. After deleting the four H:-drive recent file keys from the registry, AutoCad opens fine again, even when the remote drive isn't available.

Hope this is helpful to someone else. That said, always be very careful when poking about your computer's registry. Bad things can happen.