Inventor home screen and project folder

[eleblanc]

So i've just installed inventor 2021 on a new p340 workstation. All was good until i changed project folder location to a mapped drive to a shared folder on our internal network. After restart the home screen is gone and all black.

Other issue and not related to black screen is how slow the home screen is when mouving cursor around you can see how laggy it is.

I tested both issue above on home workstation, while at home i use a vpn and then map a drive to the folder, i still get black screen. But second issue of lag of the home page is alot less on home workstation, which is 6 years old.

See screencast below. Obvious that as soon you change project folder to mapped drive the home page does not load anymore

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/e77ae26e-4e26-423d-aeb5-34d707e8b686

Any ideas? thank you

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! This may be related to the network connection and also the number of favorite and library folders in the project. Please try a few thing and see if it helps.

1) Right-click on Inventor icon on the desktop -> Properties -> Compatibility -> check "Run as Admin."

2) Make sure all critical Windows updates are installed.

3) Install all applicable Inventor updates.

4) Change number of last opened files to 0 (Tools -> App Options -> General -> My Home -> Max number of recent documents -> 0).

5) Make a copy of the active project file -> edit the project setting -> remove all library and favorite folders.

Please report back which above step helps.

Many thanks!

[eleblanc]

Hello, max # of document is 1 to 199, so i'Ve set it up to 1. 5) make a copy to where ? and which project file you want me to copy, the original or copied one? please elaborate on point 5.

[eleblanc]

Also note that by running inventor in administrator mode i will never have any issue, because in admin mode i am unable to see or access my network mapped drives, so running inventor in Admin mode is note a option for me

[eleblanc]

More test i have done. I kept the inventor defaut project folder %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Inventor\Projects\

Then copied one by one my project shortcuts into that default folder. 3-4 shortcuts and inventor load properly and show home page. 7-8 projects, initially a black screen appears and you can see at bottom left "loading" then 2-3-4 seconds later and home page appears and i can see all of the 7-8 project shortcuts. But as i reach 14-15 shortcuts, home page will never load and black screen will stay. All of the shortcuts point to a mapped drive e:\. So either something change between 2020 et 2021 on how they load project shortcuts, or 2021 is having issue accessing my shared network folder.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I suspect this could be related to your network setting or Windows User Profile setting. Somehow the system is blocking Inventor to access certain folders.

The project (ipj) file I was talking about is the active project ipj. It should be found in your user document folder. It is a text-base file. Just make a copy as a backup in case something goes wrong, so you can roll back.

What is the Anti-Virus tool and any system monitoring tool you use?

Many thanks!

[eleblanc]

Only windows 10 anti-virus and protecting utilities, no third party

[eleblanc]

One more info, i was not having this problem with inventor 2020.

[gcoombridge]

@eleblanc I posted a similar issue a few weeks ago on this thread: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/minor-2021-2-issues-home-screen-and-ilogic-rule-button...

[eleblanc]

Hi,

Make sure that all folders in the file tab of setting are all local hard drive and see if the home page loads righ away, Then you'll know like me that the issue is related to accessing a path other then local drive. I'm at the point of maybe installing 2020 just to see if pointing to a network folder cause same issue i am having in 2021. But i'm pretty sure i won't. I wasn't having this behavior / issue minutes before i started to install new software on new workstation. And all autodesk related software on my old workstation has been removed.

[Ed__Jobe]

Hi @johnsonshiue I'm using 2021.3 and having this problem still. When I start IV, the Home screen is black and the status bar underneath the Home tab says "Loading...". If I click on Home in the ribbon, the home screen loads, just not on startup.

Note that I'm working on my desktop via vpn from home. I haven't tried it working from the office yet.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Ed,

My above reply (#6) is my understanding of the issue. If it does not apply to you, then it will be a new behavior to me. Likely, there are shared network folders no longer available. You may want to reduce the number of recently opened file (Tools -> App Options -> General -> My Home -> Max number of most recent files; change it to 10). Or, simply suppress the My Home.

Many thanks!

[Ed__Jobe]

@johnsonshiue I tried the steps you mentioned in post #2 and #6. I set recent files to 1 and switched to the Default project that looks at the C: drive. I don't think it's related to the files because if I click on the My Home button in the toolbar, it opens fine. It just doesn't do it automatically at startup.

Interesting...I tried it again and it flashed black but opened the home page. I switched back to my current project and it opened. Let's see how long it lasts.