Object reference not set to an instance of an object

[ChristiPedersen]

I see a few posts about this but none that say the easier way to fix this or why it happens.  We saw this yesterday with 2 totally different companies, different setups completely.  Opening vault client gives a "object reference not set to an instance of an object".

What we found is the actual folder to delete is under %appdata%, Autodesk\ADPSDK.  It won't let you delete everything,  You have to kill the following processes to fully clear the folder.  "ADPClientService.exe" and "AdSSO.exe".

Restart vault and the error goes away.  If you clear the whole Autodesk folder, you have to reset everything and AutoCAD sometimes needs a reinstall.

This issue seems to reappear after a reboot.

Why is this happening?  This does not seem like an issue isolated to a company's configuration but a background process borked by Autodesk?  We have not seen the issue on any Windows 11 machines.

Looking for feedback.  This issue was quite a hinderance yesterday.

[ChristiPedersen · Accepted solution]

Fixed here
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-forum/object-reference-not-set-to-an-instance-of-an-object/m-p/...

[ronaldgevern]

An object is an instance of a class, and it resides in memory at a specific location. A reference is a pointer that describes the memory location where the object is stored. When you encounter the message "object reference not set to an instance of an object," it means that you are trying to access an object that either doesn't exist, has been deleted, or has been cleaned up.

if (mClass != null)
{
// Go ahead and use mClass
mClass.property = ...
}
else
{
// Attempting to use mClass here will result in NullReferenceException
}

To avoid encountering a NullReferenceException, it is generally preferable to prevent the error from occurring in the first place. This can be done by testing objects for null before using them. By checking if an object is null before performing operations on it, you can handle potential null references gracefully and take appropriate actions to prevent errors or unexpected behavior.