Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: SDConcepts on October 19, 2010, 03:05:31 PM
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I just finished reinstalling win XP on my computer. this is a dedicated setup for mach to run my cnc. i had it running before but windows would lock up. so this time i reloaded windows with using the optimization suggestion of loading with F5. now when i run mach 3 i can't get anything to do anything. i even went out and bought a seperate PCI serial adapter card thinking there maybe a missing driver in windows with the new install and still nothing. i can't even get my limit switches to trigger on the auto detect function.
i know this seems really stupid as i had it running before, but i'm at a loss as to whats going on now. btw the computer is a 3ghz pentium with 2 gigs of ram. this is the same computer i ran before with mach 3 just a new install of windows xp.
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You say in the title that the driver test wont work, what does it actually do or say when you try and run it?
Hood
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it says that the driver test that system is under mach 3 control but nothing happens on the screen.
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Try removing the Mach3 pulsing engine via device manager then trying the driver test again. If that doesnt work then maybe try the specialdriver.bat
Hood
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ok, i reinstalled mach 3 complete after manually removing the driver through device manager. i did get the driver test to work once and now it tells me that it can't find the vectors.
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Try installing an older version and see if it works.
Hood
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I really didn't want to use an older version and nothing changed in the hardware, only the software change. i am tempted to reload windows XP with the standard installation and then go through and disable features. maybe there is something missing with this stripped version that mach needs to run well with my hardware configuration.
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I was just meaning to install the older version to see if it works, if not then its almost certain its a XP issue. But as it wont take long to reinstall XP it might be the way to go.
Hood
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ok heres where i am at... i did load the old software and it didn't work either. so i reinstalled windows xp with the standard configuration. it didn't work with either as well. i finally read a post on here and went into the bios and change the PP to EPP and now its working with the new 3.042 software. however, as before, mach 3 will lock up the computer after a certain amount of time of just being on. even without a running a program if i leave it just on with or without the servos engaged it locks up. then i have to reboot the computer. i did try the optimization stuff and it doesn't seem to help this problem. any ideas? i am tempted to reinstall with the F5 load of xp and see if it works now that pp is set to EPP. i am trying to get to the point of having a reliable system but i can't keep rebooting up every time it locks up.
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Does the driver test look ok?
What CPU % is the system running at when Mach is open?
Does it only crash with Mach open or does it crash with just windows
Hood
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the computer only locks up with mach 3 open. otherwise it can sit there all day just on. this computer is a 3gHz celeron processor with 2 gb of ram. i thought i built it well enough to avoid these issues. driver test looks good at 45 kHz as thats where i'm running, its a nice steady stream with a blip every now and again. the cpu percentage i can check in the morning but i don't think its much at all.
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How much of a blip is it? Is it onboard graphics?
Hood
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yes it is on board graphics. when i had a seperate graphics card, it would freeze sooner. the blip is 10.2 microseconds
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Does the frequency on Diags page sit fairly steady and about the 45KHz you have set?
Hood
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yes the frequency is one really smooth line. there is a small spike every now and then but its smooth and the spike is intermittent.
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I was meaning the frequency on the diagnostics page in Mach.
Just dont know what to suggest as it seems you have done most, apart from maybe to heck in the BIOS for any power saving features just in case something there is causing issues.
Hood
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The frequency on the diagnostics page starys fixed at 43860 and doesn't move. i am half tempted to try out the smooth stepper, but i know thats got its own share of issues. i am today going to reload windows one more time with the F5 setup. once that is done i will compare it to what i'm currently running. if its no better i'm throwing out the darn computer and starting over with a brand new one.
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Alright, well i did a full reinstall of windows xp with using the F5 classic compute install and now it won't even boot up. i did try and install a seperate video card on this install so i'm willing to try it one more time without it. this is getting ridiculous. why do i need to buy a new $500 computer to run a basic software program without crashing?
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Well really Mach is a bit more than a basic programme, especially if using the driver, having said that most computers dont have an issue but unfortunately there are the exceptions and it looks like yours may be.
Hood
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I was running v..020 for some time and now it does what you are describing. I start the computer and it runs ok, I start mach3 and it runs ok, I try to load gcode and it locks up. For me, I believe, it's a processor / motherboard problem. My computer is old. On the new one, for me to run the driver test, I had to right click on the tester and run as administrator once, after that it ran fine. Now the the issue for me is mach is not seeing the parallel port.
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I had the same thing happening when trying to run at 45khz. I never could go over 25khz reliably, even on a higher end PC.
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well today i've invested the last $250 that this machine will ever get unless it runs. i just bought a new computer for it and if it works i will post up the details and a comparison between what i had and what the new one is.
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Well the new computer seemed to solve the problem. i don't know if the other one was just old or what, it did run at one point in time. anyway the new machine is a intel core duo E7550 with a gigabyte mother board, 4 gb of ram and the intel video chipset. i added a 320 gb hard drive and am running win xp. so far zero problems and its been on for two days straight. i periodically go and fiddle with the control to make sure that its still on and do some jogging, run a short program and then let it sit. before it would lock up while changing screeens, activating a program, or just sitting there.
my computer guru surmises that the ram is bad in the old setup. but its not worth trying to locate old ram to keep it going.