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Excessive crashes with PCDmis

DR LokiZ

Hello all and please help with system crashes,

Apologies if this has been asked before but I didn't see any recent posts and I am not getting any assistance from Hexagon tech support and have decided to save the money and let the service agreement lapse and check in with the community.

Can anyone tell me if increasing my RAM might assist in system reliability?  I have been tracking for the last 140 days and have had 335 system crashes with roughly 21 1/2 hours lost in restarts.  It seems as though I can only get through two or three routine runs before I can no longer save the results or program or Dmis just crashes.  Once on the main menu screen even approaching a routine icon will crash PCDmis.  I have gone through "resource required", "While trying to load Alternate Style( NewCannoliInvisbleStyle)", "PC-DMIS Application has stopped working", "You do not have a License. PC-Dmis cannot continue.", quickfeature or GeoTol feature selection issues or if I try to open a folder or PDF if Dmis is running or it crashes Windows Explorer and causes many other issues.  The previous programmer's solution was to close Dmis and restart the computer after every run.  This effectively negates any efficiencies that a DCC CMM provides.  When I was doing that prior to logging crashes and dealing when it happened, I was losing on average just over 1 hour a day restarting computers causing more wear to computer hardware than reasonable.

I have asked about conflicts with our firewall but never heard back a response.  I know from use that PCDmis is very resource hungry, but this is beyond ludicrous.

System: PCDmis 2023.2 SP 11 on a Global Advantage Silver 7.10.7

              Computer was bought from Hexagon with the machine and the only difference with online system suggestions is our Intel Xeon W-2123 processor against the recommended W-2223.

  • 0
    DR LokiZ said:
    I try to open a folder or PDF if Dmis is running or it crashes Windows Explorer and causes many other issues.

    This issue seems to be related to the operating system. Is it repeatable?

    Based on the data you provided, it appears that the program runs for over four hours each time. I’m curious—what was the situation like before upgrading to 2023 and W-2123?

  • 0

    antivirus, some of them don't play well with Pcdmis

    Also, find the power settings, you do NOT want any of the 'green' settings turned on, full power, all the time.

  • 0 in reply to RobOntario

    The issue is not repeatable.  It would appear that if I push the resources, memory?, to the limit then any additional load just closes everything down and not even Ctrl+Alt+Del works, just a black screen of pain while it cogitates.  Most of the times I can do a warm reboot but sometimes it is vapor locked and I have to do a cold reboot.  The task manager doesn't reflect any excessive loads when I can get to it.

    I have only 4 months history with the machine but from what I have heard from previous personnel, the update from 2021 was when the issue really became a problem.  The computer hardware has been consistent from the purchase.  IT has done a number of upgrades to security IAW government regulations.

  • 0 in reply to Matthew D. Hoedeman

    Thank you. Those conflicts were the one area I was hoping Hexagon Tech Support could help with, provide suggestions.  Between AV and Firewall SW, that was one of my main concerns as I have pushed before for free machines. IT normally doesn't understand that the system needs complete freedom but how to do that in a world with so many cyber-attacks.

    Checked the power settings and most were pegged at maximum.  Found hybrid sleep was on and USB selective suspend was enabled but switched those around.  Cross fingers hopefully it will help.

    Thanks again.

  • 0 in reply to DR LokiZ

    yeah, if the USB goes to sleep, Pcdmis will no longer see the dongle.

  • 0

    Did you disable the start page? Can be found in the F5 settings (I believe). Try shutting that off.

  • 0 in reply to vpt.se

    I second this. We have the Home Page disabled on all our machines as it has caused a pre-mature crashes in previous releases. I am not sure about now, but it is a resource hog. 

  • 0 in reply to bfire85

    When we updated to 2020 R2 a few years ago we had the same problem. Shutting off the home page fixed it. I did kinda like the home page but...

  • 0

    everything mentioned above is good stuff. In addition, each user ID that logs into Windows on that PC will need to have these registry keys and folders (at bottom) set to administrative and read/write permissions.

    I do not think your problems are resource related.  Unless you are opening large (>100mb) *.CAD routines I highly doubt additional RAM (or upgrading graphics card) will net any gain whatsoever.

    I also advise if you are using a network folder to store any PCDMIS files (PRG's, PRB's, etc) don't.  Copy them locally to that machine's hard drive and set them as read only if you need configuration management sustained.

    Per the Hexagon support page, the following is what they say is required:
    “If I do not have local admin access can I still run PC-DMIS?
    May 25, 2018•Knowledge
    Details
    Yes- if the end user is denied local admin access on their PC to run PC-DMIS, then ask IT to make the following changes to the application's install folders and registry branches below.

    Grant the user's account full permissions on all of our Hexagon application folders here:

    • C:\Program Files\Hexagon (64-bit installs)
    • C:\ProgramData\Hexagon

    In the registry you should also explicitly give the same user full permissions to the following branches:

    • HCU\Software\Hexagon
    • HKLM\Software\Hexagon
    • HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Hexagon
    • HU\.DEFAULT\Software\Hexagon
  • 0 in reply to louisd
    louisd said:

    In the registry you should also explicitly give the same user full permissions to the following branches:

    • HCU\Software\Hexagon
    • HKLM\Software\Hexagon
    • HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Hexagon
    • HU\.DEFAULT\Software\Hexagon

    This only applies to older versions (before 2022 I think).  Settings are now stored in .json format in the following folder locations...

    C:\ProgramData\Hexagon\PC-DMIS\version

    C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Hexagon\PC-DMIS\version

    .

    Where username is the Windows user account name and version is the PC-DMIS version (e.g. 2024.2)

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