Topic: More trouble with AutoCAD 2006

[BlueBear]

Good afternoon

I know i posted a topic not to long ago about saving problem with Autocad 2006. Now my boss is running into problems with 2006. This is what he said.





I am having a recurring problem with 2006 and it is getting worse. Using Win XP

When I go to close a drawing it takes up to 20 seconds to close when I accept the changes, whether something was done or not.
it used to close in a fraction of a second.

This is a relatively new occurrence and doesn’t happen with every drawing.

And now it is starting to take a log time to open. The % bar in the taskbar goes to 99% hangs for 20 seconds or more and then finishes loading the drawing, sometimes. Sometimes it never opens or goes beyond 0%.

All drawings are in house and no vertical applications are used.

I have all the latest windows updates except SP2, which when installed on another computer here with 2006 caused fatal errors upon opening it, so I’m not going to install it on mine. The re-install on that machine seems to be working.

I have 1.5 gig of ram and 18 gig free disk space, dual 3.0 processors. Paging file is 4096 mb (it will not let me make it larger)

The slow opening started after the latest windows upgrades and XP will not let me go to a previous system restore.

I am at my wits end. I got used to the initial slow opening of everything 2006 but it is now beyond ridiculous.

I am hoping to get suggestions before I go the repair / reinstall route, since I am not sure what customization will be wiped out with this process.

Thank you

[David Hall]

if you installed SP2 after 2006, I am 99% sure you will have to re-install 2006 because of registry changes.

[CADaver]

Is Norton running?

[BlueBear]

if you installed SP2 after 2006, I am 99% sure you will have to re-install 2006 because of registry changes.

SP2 has not been installed but everything is up to date with patches.

Is Norton running?

Yes it is. Symantic Antivirus is what I have.

Thank you for quick responses.

[Dinosaur]

What is the capacity of your hard drive, and what is the interface?
A smaller (40gb - 80gb) ide type drive could very well be your bottleneck.
120gb (SATA interface if your machine can utilize it) and greater should offer much faster transfer speeds even if you don't need the extra capacity.  Generally, the larger the drive the faster; 160 gb to 240 gb 7200 rpm hds are offering the best cost/performance ratio right now although a 72 gb 10000 rpm drive will REALLY air things out.
With 1.5 gb system memory, you might consider opting to specify NO paging file and skip the hard disk read/writes completely.  We have had some sucess with this method with only 1.0 gb of memory.

[CADaver]

Is Norton running?

Yes it is. Symantic Antivirus is what I have.

Lose it, and see if that helps.  It is my most humble opinion that it IS a virus and should be treated as such.  Check for settings to make sure it's not doing a virus check for every read and write from the network.

Better yet, uninstall it and try AVG.

[hyposmurf]

Ive lost mine anything with symantec is now off my PC for good.It can knock out a file in AutoCAD to,only way around it is to replace the corrupted file.If you do go to remove Norton be sure to search your registry for reminants of Symantec,it stick round for a while.

[Keith™]

A known problem with 2006 is the license manager causing problems with the program opening, especially right after any software updates to the system. There are 3 solutions:
Loose the updates (not good)
Physically repair the registry (not for the faint of heart)
Uninstall and Reinstall A2k6 (simplest for most users)

Incedently the registry tweak which I found on another site is as follows:

Select START -> Run then type REGEDIT and click OK -  you would browse to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R16.0\ACAD-201:409\AdLM
or whatever key is the one leading to the AdLM key (it would depend on the Locale setting of your installation, this example uses ACAD-201:409)
Once you are there,  edit the value of TYPE to reflect the following values:
dword:00000019

[caddspaz]

hello. i am the boss who asked bluebear to post the topic

i appreciate all the responses.

i thank you for the suggestion but a new hard drive is not an option at this time, since i may getting a new machine soon. the current HD is 80 gig with 18 gig free. we are a civil firm and many of our files are very large several hundred acre topo & aerial files, so am reluctant to turn off the paging file, maybe for no good reason except it seems wrong (MS brainwashing).

the odd thing is that both 2000 & 2002 do not have these problems on the same machine.

the problems still occur with the antivirus turned off, though at present time i have not uninstalled it.

i probably will once i found out what AVG is ^^

i did a full virus scan friday & today. no virus found.

BTW what is AVG? i am no fan of anything Norton and will talk to my boss about a change.

i tried the registry tweak Keith mentioned (on my machine it was in R16.2) but it returned an error so i changed it back (it was 0x0000002a (42) ). messing with the registry (on my work machine) always freaks me out, so i try not to.

I used the acad installation disc registry repair feature and it seems to open normally (for now) but the slow close is still a problem, with virus protection on or off.

Thanks again.

I will keep you good and kind people posted on my efforts and results (if any)

[MP]

Not sure if this will help, but perhaps AutoCAD is flaky if one's internet connection is not speedy, intermittently not available etc.

It's always bothered me that AutoCAD wants to call the mothership, so I disable the wscomm* arx and dlls. To do so I ensure no instances of AutoCAD are running, and then rename the applicable files --

[CADaver]

Avg is an anti-virus software by GriSoft that I have found to be considerably better than Norton.

Check HERE

[caddspaz]

thank you all.

our internet connection (cable) has been slow for a week (about the length of time the problems have been occuring) and went down completely on the day of the original post.

acad has been working fine for about 2 hours now (the cable is up) so i have my fingers crossed.

i printed out the AVG web page and will be talking to my boss about it.

thanks again

[caddspaz]

i have had no problems with acad 2006 since i renamed the wscommctr stuff.

right before i did that my internet went down again and acad wouldnt open a dwg, which made up my mind to try the rename suggestion.

i will be talking to my boss about the AVG software soon.

thanks again

[whdjr]

Not sure if this will help, but perhaps AutoCAD is flaky if one's internet connection is not speedy, intermittently not available etc.

It's always bothered me that AutoCAD wants to call the mothership, so I disable the wscomm* arx and dlls. To do so I ensure no instances of AutoCAD are running, and then rename the applicable files --

So MP,

How do you access the all the 'content' available to you thru the Communication Center since it dissappears after you change those files?
Just use regular browser access?

[MP]

I do not use Communication (with mothership) Center and get along just fine using traditional resourses.

/I'm not paranoid but those guys following me sure are ...

[hyposmurf]

I dont use it either.Talking about them snooping