Framemaker 10 crashes a lot

[noname451]

I'm running Framemaker 10 on a Windows 7, 64-bit machine, and it crashes all the time. It used to be when I had two documents open in a book. Now, I don't open two documents but that's seriously impacting on my productivity and the product's utility - every time I check a cross-ref to another document in a book it crashes.

Today, I was just searching in the same document.

All of these documents were created with Framemaker 7.x on a 32-bit system.

PLEASE HELP me.

Thanks.

[AxialInfo]

Do you see any errors in the Win7 Event Viewer after a crash?

Do you have SP1 or not? Do you have other apps open at the same time, e.g. Word, Outlook, whatever?

Is there any error msg in the FM Console file?

[noname451]

I don't monitor the Win7 event viewer. What will that show me?

Yes on SP1 and other apps. Why would that make a difference?

Yes FM does display an error message before closing. What is the FM Console file?

[AxialInfo]

Why monitor Event Viewer. Usually event viewer shows any system errors when there's been an application crash. If one can correlate the time of the FM crash to the time(s) listed in event viewer, it can sometimes reveal conflicts between apps or components to those apps. As an example, Office 2010 has a problem with older Type1 Postscript versions of Helvetica and Times, standbys in the FM world.   The Event Viewer shows that the crash involves "usp10.dll" which it turns out is the Windows Unicode handler. While AFAIK FM does not use usp10.dll, nevertheless any crash on a system, especially one involving fonts, could conceivably cause instability in FM.

More info on usp10.dll issue:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/767210?tstart=0

Why SPs matter. Apparently there is a fix for usp10.dll in Win7 SP1

FM console file.  The FM console file is a pop-up window in FM. The entries in that window are also written to the console.txt file (on XP/FM9 it's in the Windows install directory, not sure where in FM10/Win7). The console contains FM messages, often relating to font issues, font substitutions, or errors that FM has when opening or working on files.  It's FM-specific info that is not in Event Viewer.  If FM crashes so that the console window closes before you can view it, search for the console.txt file. Also, btw, script writers (e.g. Framescript) often make use of the console file in order to write processing messages.

For example:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/529/cpsid_52907.html

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

noname,

Please also follow this thread: Frequent Crashes.

- Michael

[noname451]

Thanks Michael, I will. I did see that thread but it's a 32-bit system. I have a 64-bit and thought that required a thread of its own.

[Art_Campbell1]

As has been posted a few times before, it appears that the file conversion utility in FM 9 or 10 doesn't do a great job on rolling forward FM 7 files (IMHO, of course).

I fixed most problems I had by saving the imported / converted 7 files as MIFs in 9/10, and then saving those files as .tm files. The MIF washing process parses characters (FM 7 is not unicode compliant; 8-10 are), and also parses and verifies the internal file structure, removing any non-supported features or corruped characters.

If you want to do this by the book, download the MIF2Go evaluation from omsys.com. It installs a MIF Washing utility program that says active and free even if you don't buy the program.

Cheers,

Art

[noname451]

Art,

Thanks so much. I'll give it a try and post my results

I'm a re-newbie to Framemaker (I've used it before but it's been a long while ...): what's a .tm file (or is that supposed to be .fm?)

Peter

[Art_Campbell1]

It was supposed to be .fm, not .tm -- I wasn't fully caffinated yet.

[noname451]

Hi Art,

I tried the FM 7 - mif - FM 10 and that didn’t work. Still crashing and now w/ alarming frequency. Just about every time I have two files open and often when I have just one.

I've been in contact with Adobe support and we appear to have them stumped too. So far, we've renamed the appdata file in case a file in there got corrupted. No difference. Made Adobe PDF my default printer (go figure). No difference. And yesterday re-installed FM 10, trying to put the appdata in the Local folder rather than the Roaming folder. (The support tech said that could be the cause but the Roaming folder is what the FM 10 install chooses and we have no way to alter that.) No difference.

Evidently, I've been talking to an intermediary - not the technical support person. I've been promised that my case would get escalated.

Peter

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

Am 08.04.2011 um 22:15 schrieb noname451 <forums@adobe.com>:

And yesterday re-installed FM 10

Was that done from optical media or a harddrive? It is worth a test to copy the installer to a hard drive and execute it from there.

- Michael

[noname451]

It was done from optical media.

Note: This afternoon we turned off several services with msconfig, and it appears to have fixed the problem. I'm especially looking at the Lenovo scrolling button (that button in the middle) service since it no longer works in Framemaker and I no longer have the problem. I'm not sure which service that is though. That button still works in other applications, but not in Framemaker.

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

We all want to learn something. I guess it is a lot easier to repeat the installation from a harddisc instead of trying all permutations of possible service conflicts. Of course, if you detect some other software as the source of crashes as much information as you can provide might help.

- Michael

[max_drawdown]

@noname451,

"e turned off several services with msconfig, and it appears to have fixed the problem"

Did the symptom (crashes) come back?

Which services did you turn off?

Best regards,

[noname451]

It was awhile ago and a different computer. But it was related to the pointer/touchpad buttons. I was use a Lenovo Thinkpad, and it has a button that I can use to scroll up/down/left/right. When I used that it overwhelmed the input buffer or something causing it to crash. It was consistent too, Every time I used the button Framemaker crashed.

I'm on a Dell now and it has a similar button but I don't have the problem anymore.

[max_drawdown]

@noname451,

Thanks!  And congratulations....

[Tekscribe]

See also these Discussions:

• Internal Error 10024, 9332515, 9332572, 7278063
• Why is FM10 crashing when I change conditional text settings?

I am not in a position yet to obtain another laptop instead of the HP Mobile Workstation now in use.  FM10 crashing a lot, in my case, could also be something to do with 64-bit mode, Win7, or both.

Installed trial FM11. It crashes too with the same mega-book. Still awaiting news from Adobe engineering.