Hi,
Ok, I'll start off my saying that I hope posting that helped you to feel better. It sounds as if you have been frustrated for some time - no one finds being frustrated very much fun.
Frankly, to get assistance with MSM, all ya gotta do is ask....
FYI - The primary way to ask a MSM question is via the MSM support forums at
www.calypsoventures.com/forumsYou can also email the company - our support email address is easily found from our web site.
Now to the business at hand, I see two ways we could go in this conversation:
a) I could try to help you figure out what tech problems you're having and get you to have a nice working, reliable MSM install that works day in and day out like so many other MSM customers enjoy.
or
b) I can help you to get the system cleaned up so that you are not using MSM at all.
I'm going to concentrate on b) as (given the tone of what you posted) that sounds like what you'd prefer.
Since you claim MSM is saying it is past the trial expiration date, I know that MSM has NOT been uninstalled. Your claim that MSM is both uninstalled AND shutting down Mach is simply, factually incorrect. You may be frustrated, but trust me, software that is not present can't get started and hence can't check an expiration date.
Since you are getting a dialog box saying that the trial period has expired, then you are starting mach with a profile that is starting MSM (The expiration check is done during MSM initialization, and that can't be run unless MSM is installed).
So step 1 is to uninstall MSM.
To uninstall MSM, simply run the MSM uninstaller - that will remove the MSM software from the PC.
If you want to check Manually that MSM is gone, you can check that these directories are gone:
(all these assume you installed mach and MSM into the default c:\mach3 directory, if you installed to a non-default directory, adjust the paths accordingly)
c:\mach3\bitmaps\MachStdMill\
c:\mach3\brains\autoload\MachStdMill*.brn
c:\mach3\CVI Shared Libs\
c:\mach3\documentation\
c:\mach3\MacshStdMill\
c:\mach3\ScreenSetMacros\MachStdMill.set\
c:\mach3\ScreenSetMacros\MachStdMillLathe.lset\
c:\mach3\Tool Tables\
c:\mach3\WCO Tables\
c:\mach3\MachStdMill*.*
I can also tell from what you wrote that this may not compete the process for you -
I suspect that when you installed MSM, you did not make a separate Mach profile for running MSM (as called for in the installation instructions in the MSM readme file). The documentation calls out that this is a very good idea - in fact it makes it a required step.
Why? Because MSM alters some Mcode macros for any mach profiles used to run MSM.
When you uninstall MSM, the supporting program code for the MSM specific profile macros are now gone. So when you try to run that MSM specific mach profile, you have the left over MSM specific macros, but not the components they rely on - so mach complains when trying to run the macros.
Uninstalling MSM can not magically revert your profile Mcode macros to a pre-MSM use status.
Profile Macros are stored in a mach profile directory. The MSM installer & uninstaller can't know which profiles you have are for MSM and which profiles are for other uses. If the MSM uninstaller tried to "undo" that by editing those dirs and "restoring" the mcode macros to stock 1024 state, you'd be yelling about how the MSM uninstaller clobbered your profile macros when it uninstalled...
All this is explained in the various MSM docs, and is the motivation for why one runs MSM via a separate profile.
If one follows that installation instructions, then when MSM is uninstalled, you can simply delete the directory for the profile that ran MSM.
Non-MSM profiles are never touched by MSM.
Assuming you have separate profiles, all you need to do after uninstalling MSM is to run mach from one of the older (non-MSM) profiles.
It sounds to me like the profiles were not kept separate. I'd guess that you
1) Used a single profile (hopefully not the only one you had),
2) Converted it to load MSM (which updated the profiles macros to MSM specific versions),
3) uninstalled MSM, and
4) are still using that same profile to try to run mach without MSM.
Simply changing the loaded screenset name used by a profile is NOT the same as uninstalling MSM. Attempting to do just that will cause the exact problems you "described"...
If you did not keep your profiles separated, you will need to manually restore the Mcode scripts for your profile to the stock mach-1024 versions.
In case you don't know how to do that, here are the steps:
1) Find a profile that has not been used to run MSM.
Profiles are stored in c:\mach3\Macros\<profile name>\
if you want stock 1024 mill macros try <profile name> = Mach3Mill
if you want stock 1024 lathe macros try <profile name> = Mach3Turn
These should be clean macro copies since the MACH documentation and installer also tell users not to run the stock named profiles (as any customization you make to them will get clobbered by the next mach install).
2) select *.m1s from the non-MSM profile directory and copy them to
c:\mach3\Mcaros\<the profile name that you want to convert back to using stock 1024 macros>
Note: if you have used every profile you have to start MSM, then they will all have MSM versions of the profile macros.
If that is the situation, you will have to reinstall mach to get the mach installer to put mach 1024 stock macros in the default mach profile directories.
If you only have ever used the stock mach profile, you had better copy off that profile's XML before the mach reinstall so that you don't clobber the settings from your one and only profile XML....
I'll also observe that you seem to have concluded that MSM is not for you. That's ok. Sorry you didn't like it.
I agree that you should not purchase an MSM license.While MSM works great for many, we realize that "one size does not fit all". That's why we offer 30 days free trial use.
Finally, as to your complaint that MSM will not run after the trial period has expired, all I can say is that's pretty much the definition of "trial period"...
Dave