Problem double clicking a mathcad file to open

[AndyWesterman]

Recently I have had a problem when double clicking on Mathcad files and mathcad is not already running.

the first time will open a messagebox:

and opens mathcad (but not the file).

the second time I double click on the same file,even if mathcad has been closed, works properly.

the third gets the messagebox but does not open mathcad

the fourth works OK again ...

If mathcad is open, it works every time!

I suspect that its either something that I've changed in the windows environement or from the last windows update, this last option seems unlikely as a colleague

using the same version on a similar machine (next off the production line) doesn't have the problem.

I have mathcad 15 M010 running under windows 7 32bit

Has anyone else noticed behaviour like this or suggestions on why and how to fix it?

Regards

Andy

[Werner_E]

You probably had searched the net yourself already and found a lot of results, most of them dealing with Excel or Word. Usual procedure seems to be to turn off Dynamic Data Exchange. Excel seems to have a switch for that in its options.

As an aletrnative you may delete the Ddeexec key completely for the file extension in the registry .

Path is: HKEY_CLASSE_ROOT\Mathcad xmcd\Shell\Open\Ddeexec

Do the same for the other extensions like xmcdz and maye also the template extensions.

Others suggest to delete the "command" key (also under "open") as it may contain an invalid string, but I guess if this would be the case it wouldn't work every second time.

Keep in mind that when fiddling around with the registry its a good idea to make a backup first - export the key you intend to delete to a file first.

[RichardJ]

I would not only back up the registry, I would create a Windows restore point. It's always a good idea to have at least one restore point anyway, and more than one doesn't hurt.

[AndyWesterman]

Hi All,

I had thought that this was a fix for it yesterday:

Made a restore point,

exported the strings & deleted entry in registry,

on re-boot as expected can't open mathcad with click from explorer.

Imported strings back into registry & seemed to be OK after re-boot, but on re-boot this morning, it was back to the same problem!. since then it has 'fixed' itself again - so I guess that I don't understand the rules properly yet.

Regards

Andy

[AndyWesterman]

After checking all the running processes, & closing them down , I think that the cause is an incompatibility with the microsoft voice recognition, built into windows 7 & on .

My wife had been asking if it was possible to set up for dictation & I had an experiment to find out the capabilities before trying to explain it to her.

Since then it has been disabled but not deactivated so still running in the background.

I have turned the option off completely now & haven't had aproblem in the last 3 re-boots, so hopefully that is it...

Many thanks for the suggestions

Andy

[Werner_E]

Hmm, crazy thing and hard to find out the the one would influence the other. Hope that solved your problem permanently.

One other thing I could have suggested is to run mcregister.exe in the Mathcad 15 directory.

[JeffH1]

I've had similar issues, but no system changes of late that would have turned anything on.

Which process exactly did you kill to fix the problem?

I also found that if I wait long enough (10s of minutes) Mathcad eventually starts. Whatever is going on, while Mathcad is trying to startup, I also can't fire up the task manager. I end up having to reboot the machine.

Please update us if this turns out to be a long term fix.

Jeff

[AndyWesterman]

I turned the option for voice recognition off through control panel > ease of access > speech recognition.

I have since turned it back on - problem came back; so as confident as you can be with these twitchy items that it is the cause, & now its off again!

In task manager , I think this was a process "sapisvr.exe" but it could have affected more and/or loaded any number of other modules. Since I have mathcad working, I haven't bothered to investigate further, though I may try Werner's suggestion of mcregister.exe.

To be clear it didn't slow anything down , it either worked or failed with a messagebox and often with a binary toggle & I never had a problem with task manager.

There is a utility - "process explorer" - I can't remember who the author was but probably microsoft, this gives a lot more information about what processes are / do & what called what.

It makes it a little easier to decide which processes can be killed.

I used this to identify possible sources & killed them all.

Once it was clear that one of them was responsible the rest was just a matter of time & re-boots...

Regards

Andy

[Werner_E]

There is a utility - "process explorer" - I can't remember who the author was but probably microsoft, this gives a lot more information about what processes are / do & what called what.

Its part of the Windows SysInternals Suite and can be downloaded free from Microsofts technet site: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Highly recommended!

[VladimirN]

Thanks for this.