Guided Tutorial not loading

[patrick.kerrigan]

Kind of at my wits end with this issue, and not really sure where else to look for answers.

I am a technician for a school system and have a unique issue with Inventor. An instructor utilizes the Guided Tutorials within Inventor to assist her in teaching how to use the program, and since recently upgrading our machine to Windows 10 she has been unable to use these tutorials. Upon attempting to load the tutorials under a student's account (which is heavily restricted rights-wise) the tutorials do not load properly and they are greeted with the error message:

Failed to load URL http://localhost:44441/guided-tutorial-plugin/v2/engine#/play/INVNTOR/2018/ENU/Part%20tutorial%202?channel=guided-tutorial-response-channel-000000?mode=enabled?user=hoggard.student?tutorialLanguage=ENU with error A connection attempt was refused. (-102).

The troubleshooting for this error that I can find was to re-install the Guided Tutorial plugin, which I have tried and has not resolved the issue. The other solution I found was to make sure firewall/proxies were disabled, but that has been tried as well without success.

What I have noticed through extensive troubleshooting is that the two "Node.exe" processes required for the Guided Tutorials are not starting when Inventor run under the student account. If I run Inventor under any other account (Teacher or Admin, either work fine) the "Node.exe" processes start as they should, and the Guided Tutorials work without issue. Also, if I manually start Node.exe and leave it running as a desktop program, the Guided Tutorials work properly when launched from the student account.

My question is: Is there some kind of logging that I can enable within Inventor to try and see why the two "Node.exe" processes are not starting properly? I know there must be something that is stopping them from starting, I am just unsure of what that something is.

Thanks,

Pat

[Cadmanto]

Pat,

Have you tried doing a fix/reinstall of the software?

Windows 10 x64 -16GB Ram
Intel i7-6700 @ 3.41ghz
nVidia GTS 250 - 1 GB
Inventor Pro 2018

[mdavis22569]

Here is an AKN article about this error:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcartic...

[patrick.kerrigan]

This issue happens on multiple different machines, but yes I have tried re-installing Inventor with the same results.

[patrick.kerrigan]

Thank you for the reply, but I have already attempted this step and did not resolve my issue.

[Cadmanto]

Sounds like you do not have a floating network license.  When you did the reinstall, did you do a clean uninstall first?  To wipe the slate clean then doing a fresh install?

Windows 10 x64 -16GB Ram
Intel i7-6700 @ 3.41ghz
nVidia GTS 250 - 1 GB
Inventor Pro 2018

[patrick.kerrigan]

That's correct, we do not have a licensing server and each product is licensed individually. I have not only tried a complete uninstall but have also tried completely re-imaging the machine using a fresh Windows 10 image.

[Cadmanto]

I am going to call upon some Autodesk contacts to try and get to the bottom of this.

@Xun.Zhang

@johnsonshiue

Maybe one of these guys can get to the bottom of this issue for you.

Windows 10 x64 -16GB Ram
Intel i7-6700 @ 3.41ghz
nVidia GTS 250 - 1 GB
Inventor Pro 2018

[patrick.kerrigan]

Thank you! I sure hope so. I just wish it was easier for me to see what is preventing Node.js from starting. There has to be some hidden log file that I can enable to see what's happening in the background!

[Paul.Normand]

I'm happy to hear that the guided tutorials are proving useful to your instructor - not so good that you are having issues. The team that can get to the bottom of the issue is taking a look at it and will respond.

Thanks,

Paul

[DannyHubbard]

Pat,

To enable more logging create a Windows environment variable called ADSK_LWS_LOG with a value of 1. Log out and log back in and start Inventor, log files will be created at "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\.desktop-connect". Might want to check the firewall ports as the user to make sure 44441 and 44442 are open, those are the ports the Node process's use to communicate.

Thanks,

Danny

[patrick.kerrigan]

I created a system environment variable, but I do not see a "Server.log" file in that location. There are two folder there, "pids" and "sock", and two files, "config.json" and "id_desktop_connect.log".

Also, I don't believe it's the firewall. I have created two rules, both inbound and outbound, for those two ports and still are not having any success. 

[DannyHubbard]

Sounds like you are looking in the .forever folder instead of the .desktop-connect folder.

Log files will be created in "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\.desktop-connect" should be an errors.log and a server.log

Thanks,

Danny

[patrick.kerrigan]

Whoops! I definitely was looking in the wrong folder. However, there are no .log files in the ".desktop-connect" folder other than "guided-tutorial-plugin.log". When I set the environment variable, I set it under the "System variables" section as well as the "User variables" section. Neither variables seem to be generating any log files. Am I doing something wrong?

[DannyHubbard]

If you aren't getting the log files as all it would appear the Node.exe processes aren't even trying to start, so I would go back and start checking the permissions you removed from "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Desktop Connect" for the students. Maybe Read & Execute was removed for some reason.

Thanks,

Danny

[patrick.kerrigan]

In our environment, students have "Restricted" access to the C:\ drive, meaning that they cannot browse or navigate within the C:\ drive, but have full rights to launch programs from the C:\ drive. I have checked permissions from an admin account, and student accounts have full control to the Autodesk folder. We have even tried changing ownership of the Autodesk folder as a whole to the student account, but with the same results.

[DannyHubbard]

Might also check their access to:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\.forever

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\.desktop-connect

Could also go to the folder "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Desktop Connect\forever" in a command prompt and try manually running the StartServices.cmd

Thanks,

Danny

[patrick.kerrigan]

Running the StartServices.cmd fixes the issue, but I had to run it as myself in order for it to successfully run. Running.cmd files are disabled under the student accounts and cannot be enabled. We managed to find a workaround to this by creating a .vbs file that automatically launches an instance of node.exe at startup, which seems to fix the issue with Inventor's Guided Tutorials. It seems that as long as node.exe is running, everything works smoothly.

I am not sure if the whole "not being able to run .cmd as a student" is the reason this is broken in the first place, but teacher accounts cannot run .cmd files either, and it works for their accounts.

[lmarinez7XCZM]

It was the firewall for me that created the issue, thanks!