New install of WildFire 4 M092 fails on WindowsXP

[j0sizemore]

Good morning!

I have searched the forums and found a similar thread, but this is really irking me. We just bought (3) new Dell M6500's (XP 32bit). I set one of them up, everything went fine. However on the second one I cannot get a good install of ProE. ProE will close, ALMOST everytime with std.out message: Exception code was -1073741819. I opened a ticket with PTC, but could not get it to shut down at exactly the same point every time, so they blew it off as something in my config.pro, not reproducible,and closed the ticket. I uninstalled and re-installed twice. Usually it shuts down just when it should be displaying the browser window. Sometimes it will display the browser window and shut down when I try to navigate to the working directory. Or, sometimes it will let me open up a part and work for a while, but when I close down, I have problems the next time I try to open ProE.

The only error, besides the std.out, is a couple of Application Hang errors for xtop.exe in the Event Viewer - not equal to the number of times it has shut down.

I have: cleared all IE temp files, removed config.pro and config.sup, uninstalled ProE, deleted start-in directory, re-bootedand re-created and re-installed as the user (with Admin privileges). Corporate standard is IE7. It is fully patched, etc. Java is version 6 update 20.

Any ideas?? This machine is configured exactly the same as one I set-up last week that worked perfectly. Over the years, I havedone hundreds of ProE installs and never seen this before. And, all other applications are working fine.

Thanks in advance, Joanna

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[j0sizemore]

Thanks to everyone for their quick and insightful responses!!

I, being the lazy admin that I am, tried the simplest solution first. Dave suggested setting the web_browser_homepage to blank in the config.pro. I had seen that solution in the forums, but thought it was too simple.But because of the way ProE was exiting when trying to display the PTCweb page I tried it,and so far I cannot get it to fail with the browser set to "blank".

I will investigate further when I have more time - there has to be some underlying cause (although I have already set IE to accept cookies from ptc.com).

Other suggestions:

Try setting the home page in a config.pro to blank page.
I have seen this before. I hope this helps.

* This worked!!

________

Some early versions of 4 had issues if you have a corporate intercept requiring a password to get out to web pages on the internet. ProE would crash as it tried to load the web page into the internal browser. Even setting the default web page to about:blank didn’t help. Later versions of WF4 fixed the issue. I can’t tell you the version this was fixed. We are running M130.

Don’t know if that’s your problem or not. But it sound similar.

* Didn't really want to load a different version of Pro. All other users are on WF4 M092 with no issues...

________

The first thing I would look at is the graphics driver and graphics card. Those two have been the most common cause for unexpected exits for me on any build of Pro/E. The latest available driver may not be the most stable with Pro/E. Check for a PTC certified driver for your card.

* Yes, the card and driver are certified.

________

Are you copying a disk image from the known good machine or doing a regular install? I'd try the disk image method and rerun setup for the license. HTH.

* It was a "custom" install, which is how I do all installs - create one custom setup on a server and install from there. Although I did try re-installing from disk with no change in behavior.

________

Some random suggestions:
Do both machines have the same graphics driver? * Yes
Try to copy the install load point from the machine that works to the other one.
Have you tried running Pro/E without the config files? * Yes

Have you done a memory check? May have a bad simm. * Considered this a real possibility, but now I don't think so.

_________

I went through the WF un-install/re-install process numerous times with no success. I even reinstalled a clean XP OS twice, to see if that had any effect. None found. Still failed the same way! I even copied an installed WF2 M280/ILINK3.3 package over from a known good install on a reliable workstation and had this fail in the same way. I have successfully used this method of Pro/E rollout hundreds of times over the last 15 years. The biggest problem is that this issue can not be nailed down. It will occur on one machine, but five more will work fine! Then after a while, inexplicably, the problem seemed to go away! I put it down to the time-of-day; the direction of wind or the humidity level…!

I Googled and PTC KB’d the “Exception code was -1073741819” and found dozens of hit’s each with vastly different symptoms. Nothing even close. I haven’t contacted PTC tech support on this as I have lost faith in their ability to solve problems. Usually the PTC KB; PTC/USER group or Google work for me. * This is sad but true considering the amount of money we pay PTC for support each year.

Seriously… I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with networking. License servers at different sites; packet latency; bandwidth availability; QOS; packets getting lost in the Ionosphere??? * Gremlins...

__________

I too am having a problem with a new install of ProE WildFire 4 M092, the only difference I know of on this machine is that corporate has changed the anti-virus software to Mcafee. All of our other computers have eTrust anti-virus.
Going forward we will be switching to Mcafee.

What anti-virus software program are you running and are all of the settings the same on your 3 computers ? * We run Symantec End Point Protection. I have evidence thatSymantec is deleting the cookies that PTC iswriting when we start ProE. (PTC: when did that start?? And why would the deletion force ProE to exit??)

In Reply to Joanna Burress:

Good morning!

I have searched the forums and found a similar thread, but this is really irking me. We just bought (3) new Dell M6500's (XP 32bit). I set one of them up, everything went fine. However on the second one I cannot get a good install of ProE. ProE will close, ALMOST everytime with std.out message: Exception code was -1073741819. I opened a ticket with PTC, but could not get it to shut down at exactly the same point every time, so they blew it off as something in my config.pro, not reproducible,and closed the ticket. I uninstalled and re-installed twice. Usually it shuts down just when it should be displaying the browser window. Sometimes it will display the browser window and shut down when I try to navigate to the working directory. Or, sometimes it will let me open up a part and work for a while, but when I close down, I have problems the next time I try to open ProE.

The only error, besides the std.out, is a couple of Application Hang errors for xtop.exe in the Event Viewer - not equal to the number of times it has shut down.

I have: cleared all IE temp files, removed config.pro and config.sup, uninstalled ProE, deleted start-in directory, re-bootedand re-created and re-installed as the user (with Admin privileges). Corporate standard is IE7. It is fully patched, etc. Java is version 6 update 20.

Any ideas?? This machine is configured exactly the same as one I set-up last week that worked perfectly. Over the years, I havedone hundreds of ProE installs and never seen this before. And, all other applications are working fine.

Thanks in advance, Joanna