Wildfire 5.0 crashes or hangs while opening Assembly Files

Question

I am trying to continue using an existing Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 M030 installation on a newer laptop with Windows 11. I am seeing intermittent crashes and complete hangs when opening certain assemblies and parts.

What makes this especially interesting is that the same Wildfire installation and the same design files work normally on my older laptop.

Older laptop — works normally

Windows 10 Pro, Version 1803, OS Build 17134.1246
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670
Graphics driver 8.970.100.9001
Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 M030

New laptop — hangs/crashes

Windows 11 Home, Version 25H2, OS Build 26200.9457
HP Envy x360 15-fe0xxx
13th Gen Intel Core i7-1355U
Intel Iris Xe Graphics
Graphics driver 32.0.101.5542
Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 M030

One reproducible example

I have a Govee Junction Box assembly containing a PCB assembly with many manifold_solid_brep_*.prt.1 components used as the geometry/symbols for PCB components.

The Govee Junction Box assembly always hangs on the new Windows 11 laptop.

I examined the Wildfire trail files and found that the assembly repeatedly reaches:

manifold_solid_brep_106473.prt.1

and then stops.

I then opened that part directly, rather than through the assembly.

On the older Windows 10 laptop, the exact same file opens normally and very quickly.

On the Windows 11 laptop, the exact same file hangs Wildfire.

I also made a copy of the file called:

TEST_106473.prt.1

The copy behaves exactly the same way and also hangs on Windows 11, so the problem does not appear to be related to the filename or location.

The successful trail on the Windows 10 laptop contains:

Start ...\manifold_solid_brep_106473.prt.1
End ...\manifold_solid_brep_106473.prt.1

The failed Windows 11 trail contains the Start entry but never reaches the corresponding End entry.

There is also a separate assembly problem

Another assembly that works perfectly on the older laptop starts opening on the Windows 11 laptop and then crashes Pro/ENGINEER completely.

Many individual part files open normally and very quickly on the Windows 11 laptop, so Wildfire itself is capable of opening and displaying ordinary parts. The problem seems to occur with certain geometry/assemblies.

Troubleshooting already performed

I have tested the following:

Opened the problem part directly instead of through the assembly
Copied the entire assembly to the local hard drive; the problem remained, so it does not appear to be caused by the external USB drive
Temporarily removed my personal config.pro; the problem remained
Restored the personal config.pro
Tested graphics win32_gdi; the problem remained
Restored the graphics setting to its original/default state
Checked Windows compatibility settings for xtop.exe; no compatibility settings are enabled
Checked High DPI settings; no overrides are enabled
The tree_std.cfg warning appears in the trail file on the older laptop as well, where the part opens successfully, so that does not appear to be the cause

During one of the hangs, Windows Resource Monitor showed xtop.exe using approximately 8% CPU. The Analyze Wait Chain function reported:

xtop.exe is waiting for another process (dwm.exe)

while dwm.exe itself reported running normally.

My question

Has anyone here encountered Wildfire 5.0 M030 behaving this way on a modern Windows system, particularly with newer Intel integrated graphics?

I am especially interested in whether there are known issues involving the Wildfire 5 model-processing/graphics environment, Windows 11, modern Intel graphics drivers, or any configuration/workaround that might help.

The fact that the exact same manifold_solid_brep_106473.prt.1 file opens normally on the older computer but hangs on the newer one makes me suspect an environment/compatibility issue rather than a damaged part.

Any suggestions or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.

KenFarley · Answer

So you’re using a 17 year old version of Pro/ENGINEER and having problems. Can’t get “official” help because it’s not supported, probably hasn’t been for maybe a decade?

Most of the specs you’re listing should probably be suspects as the cause of the trouble:

Is Pro/E Wildfire 5.0 32 bit or 64 bit?
Graphics card on new system might not be compatible with Pro/E Wildfire 5.0.
Is WIndows 11 compatible with such an old Pro/E version? Maybe not.

I don’t know why you are surprised this doesn’t work so well. Pro/E and Creo have always been a bit twitchy, causing problems when people update their graphics drivers to a newer but incompatible version. Jumping onto new hardware with all the drivers and hardware completely different from the old system, it would be surprising if it did work. or did work without glitches. At the very least I’d expect weird graphics behavior.

I doubt there will be help from many folks working in the corporate world. We’ve been upgrading Creo versions regularly as time goes on. Computers get updated on a regular basis too, and replaced as support for versions of Windows is dropped. Really, there have been 13 versions of Creo released since the end of Wildfire.

I’d imagine there are reasons you’re trying to stick with WIldfire 5, perhaps the continual expense of paying maintenance and/or subscription fees, etc. The trouble is you’re kind of on your own.