Blue Screen Graphics Print Crash in Windows 10 w/ MCAD 15 ver 045

[jbayles]

January 12, 2016:  I now have Mathcad 15, version 045 on two different home machines. One machine is running a temporary trial version so as not to mess with licensing issues. I have previously reported this problem: Cannot do a copy of a surface plot or a print of a surface plot without getting a blue screen message "SYSTEM SERVICE EXCEPTION (win32kbase.sys)". This happens on two different computers, both running windows 10. It began to be a problem about a month ago. I notice that version 045 only mentions windows 8 as compatible. Two different machines running the same level of Mathcad 15 version 045 and also running the same version of windows 10. Neither machine can print surface or vector plots nor can those plots be copied from the work page without getting the major blue screen crash. I propose that this is a software problem in Mathcad and not in Windows 10?? In other words, the people who build Windows 10 at Microsoft are not likely to change their software unless Mathcad can convince them to give it a try. HELP!!!  jerrybayles2013@outlook.com

[RichardJ]

It works fine in Win 7. Have you tried more then one printer? Although since you can't copy either, that's probably not going to help.

As an aside, it's not a good idea to put your email address in a public post. Some less than savory people have web crawlers that look for email addresses on the web so that they can then spam them or send them phishing emails.

[TomGreenling]

Hi,

I updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 last week before the deadline and now have the same problems, no surface plots and I get a blue screen of death when trying to print a Mathcad.file with surface plots.  Everything worked just fine in Windows 7.

About Mathcad gives me the following: Mathcad 15.0 (M005 [MC15_M005_20101105])

Using an older (purchased Oct 2010) Dell Studio XPS 8100 with AMD Radion HD 5700 Series display adapter.

I don't know if it is related to the display driver with Win10.  Looking at Windows Device Manager and the AMD Radeon properties, I see that the drivers were updated on the day that I updated to Win10.

Anyone got any ideas of how to fix the problem other than reverting back to Windows 7?

[RichardJ]

Download and install the latest version of Mathcad 15: Thank You for Your Interest in PTC Mathcad 15 | PTC

[TomGreenling]

Hi Richard,

From your link, I updated to Mathcad ver045 and that solved the problem of not being able to see the plots.  I can now see them. Thank you!

Unfortunately, I still have the problem where I get a blue screen of death (BSOD) when printing in Win10.  I have used the mcad file I'm trying to print many times in Win7 for printing antenna pattern analysis.  Again, no problem when printing in Win7 to Adobe Acrobat pdf printer or an HP Officejet Pro 8620.

The file has some text, calculations, a figure, X-Y plots up to page 7.  On page 7 is a contour plot.  I can print everything on all pages before page 7.  When I try printing page 7 or any of the other pages with contour or surface plots, I get the BSOD and the computer reboots.

I tried printing to the following with the BSOD results:

Adobe Acrobat pdf

Microsoft print to pdf

Officejet 8620

I also tried the Microsoft XPS document writer.  It does not give me the BSOD but creates an empty (0kbyte) file.

Any other suggestions?

[AlvaroDíaz]

Hi.

Do you try to save it as rtf document? After that, can open it with microsoft word.

Best regards.

Alvaro.

[TomGreenling]

Hi Alvaro,

Thank you for your suggestion.  I have been able to save my Mathcad file to an rtf document and all of the plots (including contour and surface) are saved on the rtf file.  When I opened the rtf file using Microsoft Word 2010, I found that the areas, with hidden Mathcad computations, create a large text box that covers some of the other text or figures in the document.  I had to go through the document and delete these text boxes to be able to read the document without visual obstructions.  Your method works but it requires me to do a lot of clean up.

I also tried saving as an html file.  That also works and does not create any overlaying text  boxes or other obstructions where the hidden Mathcad computations are located.  I usually print the contents of the Mathcad file to a PDF file and send to our customers.  I can print the html file to PDF but the page lengths are different than the page length in my original Mathcad file and some of the plots get split onto two pages.  Now I have to find out how to fix the page lengths.

I hope Microsoft makes some updates or someone comes up with a fix for printing from Mathcad 15.  Thanks again for your help,

Tom

[AlvaroDíaz]

Hi Thomas.

It's amazing how many resources can be involved in the natural task of frustrate user by the side of the software.

Try this: In mathcad select all with Ctrl-A, copy and paste special into excel,as bmp, or better, as metafile graphics. Trim the image in excel only by the with, and adjust page margins to something that can coincide with  the mathcad page breaks.

With some kind of luck can use the same excel file as template for print mathcad with 3D plots.

Also, maybe you can hide the actual plot into an area, and paste it in the mathcad document as image.

Best regards.

Alvaro.

PD: 3D plots are quite rare. You can drag and drop an entire region inside it, and preserve the information inside the plot.

[TomGreenling]

Hi Alvaro,

That is another good suggestion but I wouldn't have any luck if I didn't have bad luck.  When I did the Ctrl-A in Mathcad, i got the infamous blue screen of death (BSOD).   As my wife would say, "un paso hacia adelante, y dos hacia atras.

Thanks again for your help,

Tom

[VladimirN]

Thomas Greenling wrote:

... When I did the Ctrl-A in Mathcad, i got the infamous blue screen of death (BSOD)...

Did you try to reinstall Windows OS?

[TomGreenling]

Hi Vladimir,

Thank you for your suggestion.  I had not thought of reinstalling Win10 because everything else (office, 3D cad, and simulation software) all seem to work without any problems.  I'm also reluctant in reinstalling Win10 in case I want to revert back to Win7.

I've been doing some more experiments and found that if I go to the bottom page of the Mathcad file, let the computations complete, and then hit Ctrl-A, I don't get the BSOD.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a workaround for printing, I still get the BSOD (system service exception, win32kbase.sys) no matter what I do.

Tom

[VladimirN]

There is another option - to try to install Mathcad and transfer the license file into a virtual machine (VirtualBox for example).

[AlvaroDíaz]

Hi. I guess that the error must to be because graphics drivers, which are developed usually for games, and are GPU's version and maker dependent. So, probably reinstall the OS system isn't a solution. But with virtualization you can use other graphics device (virtual one) and avoid the error.

Maybe posting the error in the forum of the graphic card the guys there, usually with a lot of gamers kids which know a lot of this issues, can help.

Best regards.

Alvaro.

PD: this saying about steps, in that way, is popular mostly in Spain, Argentina, Chile, Cuba and, my lovely country, Uruguay.

[VladimirN]

AlvaroDíaz wrote:

... is popular mostly in Spain, Argentina, Chile, Cuba and, my lovely country, Uruguay...

You mean using a virtual machine?

[AlvaroDíaz]

Hi Vladimir. Not. The expression "Un paso para adelante, y dos para atrás" 🙂

Best regards.

Alvaro.

[VladimirN]

Hi Alvaro,

Qué pasa con la palabra comandante: "Ni un paso atrás!".

[AlvaroDíaz]

Hola Vladimir.

En realidad la frase anterior proviene del título de un libro de un "tocayo" tuyo, Illich Uliánov. Por eso nombré sólo esos países, en otros hace más referencia al modo de caminar del cangrejo, y no se redacta así, sino más bien como "un paso pa'lante y dos pasos pa'trás". Además, en el "lunfardo" o en "gauchesco" rioplatense no decimos "pa'lante" sino que decimos "pa'delante". Por cierto, el apóstrofe " ' " no se usa en el español castizo, sino que se usan para indicar expresiones "mal" hechas en algún tipo de localismo.

En cuanto a "Ni un paso atrás", la expresión generalmente la conocemos, pero en el mundo hispano la consigna antifascista por excelencia es "No pasarán", de la cual podrás encontrar referencias múltiples en el cancionero popular hispanoamericano.

Ambas, "un paso para adelante y dos pasos para atrás" y "no pasarán" o "ni un paso atrás" hacen referencia al modo de desarrollo de los opuestos dialécticos, por lo cual no es bueno intentar progresar de la forma en que la esposa de Thomas observa que él lo hace.

Saludos fraternos.

Alvaro.

[-MFra-]

Hi Jerry Bayles, I also have two machines (I7 and I5 Both 17 ") on which runs mathcad 15 and mathcad-prime, with the same license and I never had  any problems. I would follow the advice to reinstall the operating system, then the antivirus, then the printer and then mathcad. the license (academic) applies to both machines.

If the original operating system of your computer was win7 you should reinstall it, I have omitted to tell you that even I use win7 on one of my computer, where I installed mathcad15. I tried to make an upgrade to win10 but problems arose immediately. On the other computer, I use win10 and all is well.

Bye

FM

[jsmith-10-11-122]

Jerry, on my system this problem was caused by the Windows 10 Radeon Display Adapter driver. I solved it by reinstalling the 2006 version of the driver using the Roll Back Driver option in Device Manager > Display Adapter > Driver tab.

Jon

[TomGreenling]

I wanted to let everyone know that I can now print to an Adobe pdf file using Mathcad 15 after upgrading to Windows 10, version 1607.

Thank you everyone for the great suggestions.

Tom

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

Windows  has a neat little app, "snipping tools"  that allows you to "grab" any part of the visible desktop (as a bit map) and copy it to the clipboard or save it as an image file.  I've been using it to insert information into Prime (copy and paste into Prime 3.0 is challenging), but it would allow you to get your images out of Mathcad, although purists will complain about quality.

[LucMeekes]

There's this nice little key on every-ones keyboard that's called: 'PrtSc' or any other shortcut of 'PrintScreen'.

When pressing [PrtSc] windows will grab the entire screen and put it on the clipboard. This means that you can now paste it into a sheet of almost any graphics editor program (such as the standard 'Paint'). From there you can edit it if you like and save it to a file type supported by the graphics editing program.

Interesting to know is that the keystroke [Alt-PrtSc] will not grab the entire screen, but just the window of the active application.

For the usage of grabbing a multiple sheets, you'd just set the application that displays the sheets to the right size, and then go page by page. You then have same size picture files, and you can batch process the pictures (e.g. with Mathcad) to clip off any borders. Saves a lot of fine positioning the mouse.

Luc

[ValeryOchkov]

Hi Luc!

Sorry - I cannot find now e-mail tools in our Community and am writing to you here!

See please the draft of an optic article in attach. I would like to invite you to be coauthor.

Val

[VladimirN]

Valery Ochkov wrote:

...I cannot find now e-mail tools in our Community...