Many of my users and myself have experienced this while working with Inventor. One is working, takes a break for a few minutes and when one returns to their workstation the Inventor graphics window is frozen or blackened over and one cannot continue working. The user is allowed to save their work but to fix the screen locking issue the user needs to restart Inventor.
Our system stat's
Lenovo D30
CPU: Intel Xeon (E5-2609) 2.4 GHz
Ram: 8 GB
Vid Card: nVidia Quadro 4000 w/driver version 276.42
OS: Windows 7 Enterprise SP 1
Inventor 2013 Pro
Installed via MS System Center 2013 Configuration MGR (network depolyment)
Sounds like it might be a graphics issue. Do you have the latest drivers?
What are your screen saver settings set to?
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Or if you like something that was said and it was helpful, Kudos are appreciated. Thanks!!!!
The vid driver was accquired using the Autodesk hardware website
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?id=18844534&siteID=123112
screen saver
type (None)
125 minutes
I vaguely recall issues similar to this being posted some time back, related to display issues when the screen saver popped on. General work-around at the time was to turn off the screen saver (and possibly the power saving features as well).
I would agree with you that it could be an issue with the screen saver, however; the screen freezing/blackening also occurs when one switches and does work in a different application such as MS Word or EXcel.
Another stupid question (just to get it out of the way) - are the various Win 7 display effects like windows transparency, Aero, etc. turned off? Those can have some unexpected problems with graphics use.
Here is an interesting thread link that seems to speak to the same issue. Although I am not sure what kind of resolution it will give you.
If this solved your issue please mark this posting "Accept as Solution".
Or if you like something that was said and it was helpful, Kudos are appreciated. Thanks!!!!
Couple of quick items
Screen Saver Seetings: yesterday I set the timer to 125 minutes with (None) as the Screen Saver Selection, this morning when I checked it the timer had been reset to 10 minutes.
Other Suggestions Aero, Transparency etc...
Our IT department has our workstations on full lockdown. Users cannot install anything useless you are authorized to in the MS System Center 2012 Configuration MGR. Anything else such as drivers for 3D Connexion Space Explorer etc... needed to be installed by our IT department. I may or may not have the ability to change settings
Vid Driver from the card manufacturer:
One of my users is running the most up to date driver from nVidia, he is still having the same issues.
I did read through the other forum topic here http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-General/Inventor-2013-model-screen-is-black-when-users-unlock...
One of the poster's, MiSt2047, made the comment that this issue occurs randomly. This is what we are experiencing. Sometimes starting a command such as file open or the BOM or constrain etc... will prevent the issue from occuring and other times it will not. Other things I have tried are, doing a shift rotate, minimizing the Inventor window to the task bar, minimizing the Inventor window (not a full screen window). The screen freeze still happens. I would guessimate that this issue causes up to a 30 minute loss in productivity per user per day, that is 30 hours of lost time a week in my department. Thanks for the help everybody. Please keep posting maybe something will help
Something that you said, sparked a thought. If your system is on complete lock down by your IT department this means you are not an admin to your own system. What I am wondering is if you did have admin rights would this still be happening. I haven't experienced what you are and I am an admin on my system.
If this solved your issue please mark this posting "Accept as Solution".
Or if you like something that was said and it was helpful, Kudos are appreciated. Thanks!!!!
We just migrated to Windows 7 from Windows XP. On XP we did have Admin rights on our workstations and this issue occured with XP as well.
Driver Update
From Autodesk Hardware Website
Fully Tested driver version 276.42
Other untested drivers for Inventor 305.93, 295.93 & 307.45
From nVidia
Partener Driver for Inventor 307.45 (untested by Autodesk)
panzilte,
Have you tried configuring Inventor for compatibility mode and software graphics.
This will tell you if you have an issue with you display driver
To adjust all visual effects for best performance:
From:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/optimize-windows-better-performance#optimize-windows-bett...
This is more of how I configure most systems:
http://www.pcoptimizationsecrets.com/how-to-optimize-windows-7-with-performance-settings/
Please try the above and let us know.
panzilte,
I agree with the others that it is a video driver related issue.
I have tested the following driver release 9.18.13.2049 on a Quadro 5000 with great success:
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/63992/en-us
Please try it and let us know if it does or does not resolve your issue.
Thank you.