Frequent crashes, what to look for?

I'm running SW2005sp3.1 on WinXPproSP1, 2gb ram, 45Gb of free space on
an 80Gb HD. All files are local, saved to the network frequently.

A lot more recently, in the past couple months, it's been crashing, no
apparent rhyme or reason, I could be doing almost anything from editing
a part to moving a note in a drawing, just boom- gone.

Other than cleaning out Temp folders, what sort of other things should I
look for to help aleviate this problem, SWX *used* to run for months
between crashes, now it's almost daily.

I was hoping updating the video driver would help, but it just crashed
again... :-(

Thanks

 

Check out the latest edition of SW Express.
Thought I say an article in it regarding this issue (See bottom right
corner).

Deleted my email link and I can't find the latest edition on the SW
website.

Len

 

Thanks for the pointer, the July '05 has a pretty good atricle, I'll
check it out after lunch.

Whit

 

The July Article is pretty good. If you plan to reinstall SW then the
March article will help. The first thing that came to mind is deleting
the hidden temp files SW writes.

How does SW do on benchmarks like SpecAPC? That can sometimes turn up
flaky hardware. See below.

www.engtran.com/SWBM001.html

XPTC will help in making sure XP is up and humming correctly.

http://www.tweakguides.com/XPTC.html

 

I ran Mikes Ship-in-a-Bottle, slowest time was ~32.2 sec, fastest ~24.4 for
50 cycles.

I did the Star 2.1, Level 5, 51.83 sec, rebuild in 4.31 sec

I'm DL'ing the SPECapc, at 131Mb just what the heck is this?

Thanks

 

What is your CPU chip?

In your case SpecAPC will thrash your system for an extended period.
SpecAPC is one of the oldest benchmarks around. It changes from year to
year though. It generally takes some time to run and it is primarily
graphics oriented. The advantage for you is that it will stress your
system over time so that if there is a flaky power supply, memory, cpu,
etc. that are affected by built up heat you may only get through 1 or 2
iterations of the test instead of all 5.

Benchmarking won't always show why you crash, but it will eliminate
some types of hardware problems as the culprit.

 

AMD Opteron 148. The numbers looks pretty good IMO, I suspect it's just
something gone a bit flaky in SWX, maybe its time I upped to WinXP sp2...

Thanks for the info...

 

Maybe, but go through XPTC procedures first.

 

Will do, our internet was pretty slow earlier, I'll DL it at home and
bring it in...

 

Shut the machine down, yank the cover, and re-seat *every* cable, card,
memory stick, and of course, the cpu...

 

I wouldn't install anymore software until you solve the crashing problem.
It's possible to make it even worse if it is not a hardware problem.

 

Try Matt's article "Troubleshooting Crash Prone Systems" in his Rules of
Thumb.

http://mysite.verizon.net/mjlombard/

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

I am a little miffed at the extensive debug instructions that float
around all over the internet for Windoze. The assumption is "spend
days reading my epistle, and then hours or days debugging the
software/hardware with all this information you have just absorbed."

I believe we would have a lot less downtime if we as users maintained a
backup hard drive with a known good working state of our applications.
If you boot on another hard drive and the problem goes away, then you
have a real major boost in debugging.

If we also keep all data on another hard drive, it can be accessed by
any good hard drive with the OS & Applications.

It would help immensely in understanding if we are working with a
software problem versus the hardware box (excluding data hard drive/s).

Hard drives are virtually "cheap" compared to the cost of days of
debugging and fixing each year, so they ought to be used intelligently
by any CAD professional to increase productive output.

Bo