Revit 2014/2015 ini file not keeping settings

[BCERBimMan]

Back in July I went on vacation for the birth of my son. Just before I left, we deployed Revit 2015. When I returned both Revit 2014 and 2015 gives me the "pathing.jpg" dialogue when opening Revit.

File Locations is also blank for the template, family templates and places. (see additional images).

I have tried repathing everything through the options dialogue and the next time I open Revit, the information is gone again. I have also taken the deployment ini file, which I built and copied it to my computer in both the programdata folder and the appdata folder and it always removes the information. This pathing issue is quite annoying.

There are a few others in the office that have this issue as well but the majority do not and I cannot figure out how to fix this. Nothing I have done seems to fix it.

Has anyone else run into this?

Thanks.

[casquatch]

Jason,

Check for and remove the Revit Extensions by Autodesk. This problem cropped up for us and I found this post about it. Removing REX solved it for us, could be the same issue you are seeing.

Hoping Autodesk will release a new version of REX to fix this issue. Not word on it yet.

Thanks,
Casey

[BCERBimMan]

That didnt help. The file located here: C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RVT 2015\UserDataCache is blank. Copied over the ini from here C:\Users\JPECKOVITCH\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2014. This has the correct pathing listed but Revit isnt getting that information somehow.

Something else has to be going on.

[casquatch]

Jason,

If you watch the file in your ProgramData folder, does it revert back to a 0kb size when Revit is launched?

Did you uninstall the REX tools? Or just check on the .ini location?

Thanks,
Casey

[BCERBimMan]

I did uninstall REX. It was only installed for 2015, not 2014. The programdata location did not revert back to 0kb either.

[casquatch]

How about your appdata roaming profile info, is there a bad .ini in there still?

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2015\

[casquatch]

My bad, dumb question. I'm not sure what could be going on.

When this was happening for us, REX would be emptying out that .ini file each time Revit was opened. Once REX was uninstalled, the file remained intact and correct.

[BCERBimMan]

The appdata folder has the correct information and appears to get accessed by Revit. There was a timestamp of last night at 536pm for the Revit 2015 ini file.

*throws up hands*

[Lance.Coffey]

I’ve seen issues with the INI encoding (when editing the INI file directly with a program other than Notepad) lead to similar behavior.

If you are seeing the file being accessed/written to by Revit, have you been able to verify that the path information is being written (after setting through interface) when Revit is closed (but being cleared when Revit is re-opened)?

Also, since this is specific to particular computers, have you tried copying the Revit.ini (from both locations) from a working system to this one, or try logging in with a new user account (and get all fresh user specific files)?

[BCERBimMan]

The pathing is already in the appdata file and userdatacache of programdata when Revit is closed. I have also signed on as a different user and they had the same issue on my machine.

[Lance.Coffey]

Since logging on with a different user doesn’t clear the behavior, it doesn’t sound like a user specific issue.

If there is an issue reading the Revit.ini file (possibly due to the file encoding) in the UserDataCache, then the new user would receive this file.

Does copying a Revit.ini file from a working system (to both locations) affect the issue?

[BCERBimMan]

No, copying the file was one of the first things I did before posting.

[Lance.Coffey]

So, the issue doesn’t appear to be user specific (another user account shows same issue), isn’t related to the Revit.ini file (because a Revit.ini file from a working system shows the same behavior), and is only occurring for a few systems in the office.

Assuming that the INI file was not altered in the transfer between systems (I’ve seen text files changed when going through some systems), the INI file was replaced in both locations (there is normally an install GUID and if the UserDataCache version doesn’t match the User version then it would be copied from the UserDataCache replacing the one in the User’s folder), and that the alternate user account that was tested on the system was successfully working with Revit on another system, then we are left with the following:

• File system (there could be different file permissions for the folder/files on these systems)
• Revit installation (something in the deployment might be leading to this behavior, we could try a clean uninstall/reinstall without using a deployment image)
• Third party programs/services/add-ins (that could be interfering with Revit; a diagnostic startup may be able to clear this)
• Revit depends on prerequisite programs to function, these include Internet Explorer, Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (2008, 2010), Microsoft .NET Framework (3.5, 4.5), DIRECTX (if one or more of these are not working properly, then simply uninstalling and Reinstalling Revit would not clear the issue. However, other applications that depend on these systems would also be affected)
• The operating system (if there were an operating system, I would expect to see more widespread issues reading/writing files).

[BCERBimMan]

I am at a loss here. I do not know what is going on.

[brettgatti]

We've been experiencing this same issue randomly over the past couple of months (Revit 2014 & Revit 2015).  When it does occur, it can happen on new installs/new computers and also on computers that have been in service for months that have never experienced any other Revit related issues.  All systems are fully up-to-date with the latest Revit SP's, Web Updates, etc...

It starts off with a dialog message stating "Please wait while Windows configures Revit 2015" >> "Gathering Information".... At this point, the ini file under the Revit Version %Appdata% folder becomes zero bytes.

To mirror what others have said - typically uninstalling the Autodesk Revit Extensions, copying a fresh ini file to the UserDataCache folder and deleting the ini file under the Revit Version appropriate %Appdata% folder resolves this - at least temporarily.

[Lance.Coffey]

Have you been able to test the following?

• Compare permissions between working/non-working systems
• Clean uninstall/reinstall (of Revit) without using a deployment image
• Diagnostic Startup

[brettgatti]

I don't know about others, but due to the easy workaround (removing the Extensions for Revit) we have not done any reinstalls without using our network deployment and we have not utilized Diagnostic Startup.  It just comes down to time/value of time spent troubleshooting an issue that has an easy workaround available.

All of the computers that have experienced this issue have been created from the same image as other computers that were put into service at the same time (same hardware/software builds) that have not experienced this issue.  Therefore, all system/folder permissions are identical between machines of same build.

Brett

[Lance.Coffey]

I agree that if removing the Revit Extensions clears the issue it would be an easy workaround (especially if you don’t need any of the extensions for your normal work.

Additionally, since the “Please wait while windows configures…” message generally relates to a damaged/incomplete installation, you may be able to reinstall the extensions without having the issue return.

However, if the issue is continuing after removing the Revit Extensions (or if they were not initially installed), then we would need to investigate other causes of this behavior.

Jason, have you been seeing this behavior after removing the Revit Extensions?

[BCERBimMan]

Revit Extensions has been removed and the issue is still there. I've tried everything I can think of except rebuilding the user which the IT person will need to do.

On a side note, I have Revit 2014/2015 installed on my laptop and Revit Extensions is installed but I am not seeing the issue there.

[Lance.Coffey]

If you suspect the user profile, a test to show this would be to have another user log onto the system. If the new user works, then this would indicate that the issue is something specific to the original user account.