Opening Inventor 2017 causes 2018 to crash.

[SharkDesign]

I know this is probably the least of Autodesk's worries, but if you have Inventor 2018 open and you open 2017 it makes 2018 crash with no report dialogue box.

I occasionally have to switch back to 2017, especially during the transition period to 2018 and it's caused me to lose work a couple of times now. 

[Mark.Lancaster]

@SharkDesign

Well this is a no-no..     It has always been recommended not to launch 2 different (yearly) versions of Inventor at the same time due to the risk of corrupting the registry and other things..   If you need to work in both..  Than exit one, wait a few seconds and launch the other one.

[mslosar]

Unlike autocad, which creates new registry entries for each version of itself, Inventor uses the same registry entries for each version. It's why you see the dialog about Inventer.exe needing to update the registry when switching back and forth.

If you're in 15 then launch 18 - it sets all the registry entries to use the 2018 components. You quit, and launch 15, it resets all the registry entries again to use the 2015 components.

Never got an answer as to why - but that's they way it is. It's a killer between versions when you're used to be able to run 3 2017's simultaneously for example, using 3 different projects.

[Mark.Lancaster]

@mslosar

Numerous kudos for that explanation.. 

To go along with what you are saying..

When you exit one Inventor version.. Its best to wait "X" number of seconds perhaps a minute before you launch the other version.  When you do that, it shouldn't prompt you to register it with the OS.  Meaning when you exit a given Inventor version, its not fully closed in the background and thus if you launch another one before it finishes, you get the message.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi James,

The crash is wrong. It should not crash. As long as you don't re-register the Inventor.exe from a different release, the two sessions should run fine. What build of Inventor 2017 are you running?

Many thanks!