Help Menu weirdness - a tale of three computers...

[antennasys]

I was working on a project that involved CAM.  I had several Fusion 360 freezes, and was perplexed at the cause.  In scanning the forums I saw a suggestion that it may have been video card related, and the poster recommended running the "Graphics Diagnostic" under the Help menu in the upper right corner of the F360 screen.

I found the menu item and clicked "Grapics Diagnostic".  And nothing happened.  I tried other items in the Help menu and nothing happened.  This is on computer "W", which is a Windows 7 Pro machine, lots of memory, fast processor and a GTX 1070 graphics card.  Very strange.  I did some cleaning up on that computer, and ended up uninstalling F360 and doing a restart.  I reinstalled a fresh copy of F360.  There was no change in behavior.

Sitting to the right of "W", is another computer "S" which is a Mac Mini running MacOS High Sierra (10.13.1).  I installed F360 on that computer, and it works exactly as it should.  I ran the "Graphics Diagnostic" without impediment.  The other tabs work as well.

To the left is computer "G", which is a Windows 7 Pro machine, screaming processor, lots of RAM, Quadro 600 video card and Tesla K40 GPU.  I installed F360 on it and it ran perfectly, as well.

So, it is a mystery why the entire help menu seems non-functional on computer "W".  That, coupled with the freezes I encountered, represents a real inconvenience which I would like to remedy.

Anybody have a suggestion?  Having the three computers on my desk makes differential diagnosis easy, but I am not sure where to go from here.

Thank you!

[innovatenate]

Hi Earthling,  (love your signature)

The graphics diagnostics command can fail if there are problems with the graphics drivers on the system. If you haven't done so, I would recommend updating the graphics drivers directly from the manufacturer's website.

• Update Graphics Drivers on Windows for Fusion 360

One thing you can try is to clean uninstall the graphics driver:

• NVidia
• Intel
• AMD

Then, re-install the driver. 

Another possibility is anti-virus software scanning and/or blocking processes. You may want to try adding some exceptions in your anti-virus software to see if it helps.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

[antennasys]

I will try updating graphics drivers as a first step.  In my computer "W", I have a nVidia GTX 1070, and the driver was at version 385.69. I am now updating to 388.31.  I will report back after testing.  Thank you!

[antennasys]

Graphics drivers updated as mentioned above.  There is NO CHANGE to the behavior.  The help menu comes up when you click the question mark, but when you choose a menu item, nothing happens.

Any other ideas?

[innovatenate]

Is it with all the command in the help menu, even the diagnostic log file command? Do you have anti-virus software installed on that computer? If so, which brand/product are you using?

Does the same thing happen with the main menu (see image below)?

If it also happens with the main menu, it could be related to the text scaling on the computer. Do you have the text scaled to 100%?

[antennasys]

Only Windows Defender is running as AV on this computer, and real-time protection is disabled.  It is also running on computer "G", which runs F360 fine, even WITHOUT disabling real-time protection.

The behavior is also observed on the main menu.  I am now trying to figure out where "text scaling" is set to see if that is the issue.  Where is that found?  Thanks.

[antennasys]

I confirmed that "text scaling" in the "Display" control panel is set to 100%.

[innovatenate]

Just sent you a PM. I'd like to take a closer look if you have a chance.

Thanks,

[antennasys]

OK.... I am doing some more cleanup, uninstalling some old software.  Then, I will test once more.  Then, we can do the deep dive.

[antennasys · Accepted solution]

A huge THANK YOU to Nathan Chandler, Product Support Specialist. 

Nathan spent a long time in an online meeting with me trying to get this sorted.  It took a lot of trial and error to find the (apparent) cause.

At first we suspected the video card and driver.  I am running an NVIDIA GTX 1070 in the subject machine.  After uninstalling the driver (and much gnashing of teeth), I determined that it was not the cause.  This morning I noted that there were two video drivers, one was for Real VNC mirroring.  This driver apparently is what is used when you remote in to the computer using Real VNC.  I completely uninstalled the VNC software (it was useful in the past, but was not needed anymore), and the problem seems to have disappeared!  So, it was some conflict in video driver software, just not where we were looking.

F360 seems to be behaving itself on this computer now, and I can get back to focusing on work.  Thank you, Nathan.