Program wont open

[JostArchitects]

X5 - try to start the program, loads the icon in my taskbar, and thats it - wont open at all.
any ideas? thanks

[Dave Pitman]

You tried a re-boot, yes?

[JostArchitects]

oh yes, multiple reboots.

[Dave Pitman]

Did you change your monitor configuration at all?

Does Task Manager say Chief is running?

[JostArchitects]

task manager says it is running, nothing changed on the laptop at all. program just sits there, cant do anything with it. cant open files, cant even close it - have to end process in task manager.

[Dave Pitman]

I dunno, Steve.

If Chief is the only program giving you issues, I would uninstall and re-install the program. If you saved a local copy of the installation file (Chief_Architect_Premier-15.1.0.25-Win64.msi), it should only take a few minutes.

[Dave Pitman]

Or, wait a few hours, and contact tech support. Not sure if they're open tomorrow for sure as it is a holiday down here.

[JostArchitects]

thanks ill get in touch with them.
S

[lbuttery]

this may be toolbar related ???

find your chief toolbar folder and rename it as toolbar_old
then start chief and it will recreate the toolbar folder

Lew

[JostArchitects]

Nice call Lew -that fixed it!!

[Dave Pitman]

Indeed, good memory Lew. I had forgotten that a corrupted toolbar folder brings Chief to it's knees.

Wouldn't you think that CA could program Chief to throw a detailed error with fix directions to the user when this happens. And, it does seem to happen consistently.

Hey, Dermot...

[Joe Carrick]

Indeed, good memory Lew. I had forgotten that a corrupted toolbar folder brings Chief to it's knees.

Wouldn't you think that CA could program Chief to throw a detailed error with fix directions to the user when this happens. And, it does seem to happen consistently.

It's probably one of those errors that is affectionately know as "Spontaneous Program Termination" (SPT) for which it's almost impossible to catch and display an error message for. The Toolbar Folder & File Exist and the file can probably be opened so There's nothing to catch the fact that the file has been corrupted. Reading the corrupt file data causes a memory jump that forces the OS to abort the program.

AFAIK, it's very difficult if not impossible to determine at the File System Level that a file is corrupt.

[Dave Pitman]

AFAIK, it's very difficult if not impossible to determine at the File System Level that a file is corrupt.

In this case, I don't think Chief even throws an error at at. It just stops responding. Perhaps CA could program Chief to not require the file in order to run, and then warn the user of the problem after it loads. Wouldn't that be a fairly easy solution?

I would venture to say that most major software does not store files, that if corrupted, would not allow the program to complete it's start up process, in the user's data folder. Files required by the program should be separate from program system files. Just common sense.

[Joe Carrick]

In this case, I don't think Chief even throws an error at at. It just stops responding. Perhaps CA could program Chief to not require the file in order to run, and then warn the user of the problem after it loads. Wouldn't that be a fairly easy solution?

I don't know. It's possible that the error simply can't be intercepted. Such errors are not very common but data corruption can occur in such a way that trying to use that data can send an instruction to the processor that it just can't handle. In those cases there just isn't any way to catch it before the SPT and then it's too late.

What's more worrisome is: what causes the corruption in the firs place? But figuring that out may take months. If you can reproduce it and identify the steps then the CA developers could probably fix it fairly quickly.

[Doug Park]

If you have a set of toolbar files that cause Chief not to launch please send them to support. We have a couple of sets of files right now that exhibit the issue and are looking into fixing the problem. There is absolutely no reason we can't correct the loading issue. I'm not sure what is causing the corruption but I've heard about enough of these issues to think that it may be Chief causing the problem.

I want to make sure that this bug is fixed in the next update. The more examples of it not working that we get the better.