Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => Mach4 General Discussion => Topic started by: MosaicDave on July 11, 2018, 02:12:24 PM
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I am transitioning to Mach 4 using Windows 7 SSD 3.16GHZ 4GB memory, and I am getting this debugging report. I have tried to suppress and follow through with the report, but the Mach 4 Demo freezes and will not continue loading. The computer I am running it on does not have an internet connection.
Thank You
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Hi,
sorry Dave , I've never seen that one before.
Recommend opening a support ticket with NFS, than can be a little slow but they do respond.
Craig
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Bryanna will say, "run Mach4 as administrator." Not just from an "administrator" account, but right click, Properties, Compatability, Run this program as administrator.
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If the account is not an administrator? Can not Mach4 be used?
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I think it CAN be run from a non-administrator account, but I'll defer to the experts! I was just suggesting to TRY that in Dave's case, as it's often what Bryanna suggests when requesting support for such issues.
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Bryanna will say, "run Mach4 as administrator." Not just from an "administrator" account, but right click, Properties, Compatability, Run this program as administrator.
You know me so well! I'll add in that you may need to disable any third-party antivirus software. Many of them cause issues with various aspects of Mach4 and I recommend turning them off whenever you're using our software--especially during a cut.
Recommend opening a support ticket with NFS, than can be a little slow but they do respond.
We always respond and unless you catch us on a holiday, the vast majority of tickets are answered within a few hours. Mind you, we operate on the East Coast and we're in the office M-F, 8-5. I'd hate to think that some users might be discouraged from reaching out to the helpdesk because we "can be a little slow."
-Bryanna
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Hi Bryanna--
Thanks for your reply. My colleague who is trying to get Mach4 up and running initiated this thread from my computer here yesterday; I'm jumping in now just to add some clarifications and detail:
First, what we're doing generally, is trying to migrate to Mach4, since our current Mach3 system isn't reliable enough for us currently, despite my heroic attempts to tweak, optimize, debug, and stabilize it, over many months, going on a couple of years now.
So as to not tamper with the current Mach3 setup (which is making parts now even as I type this post), we're bringing up Mach4 on a separate computer. It's maybe a little dated, but it has an Intel Core2Duo processor running at 3.16 GHz, and it's got 4GB of memory, so I believe this should be more than adequate for Mach4. Also, we've installed a 120GB SanDisk SSD in the machine, which is formatted as just a single partition, because I'm trying to minimize file system latency, just based on the long saga of unreliability I've gone through with Mach3. Anyway so I think this machine ought to work well for Mach4.
We've just installed a clean copy of Window 7 64-bit. Then the Win7 Service Pack 1; then the chipset driver; then the graphics, Ethernet, and Audio drivers, so the motherboard has a complete set of drivers.
Then we've installed "Mach4 Hobby". I've set it to run as an Administrator, as you suggested.
Also I've disabled Windows Firewall, as well as Windows Defender, which would be the only antivirus-like thing on this system at this point.
When we run Mach4GUI.exe and then select the Mach4Mill default profile, a progress bar appears, and advances maybe 2/3 of the way across; above it it first says (something like) "Loading Screen Elements", and then "Connecting Tool Paths". At this point the program crashes, heads off into debug-report land, and freezes, so I have to use the task manager to kill the process.
This morning, we completely repartitioned the SSD and reinstalled everything again from scratch, but it just leads to this same exact result.
Any suggestions??
Thanks--
--dave
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Hello Dave,
What are the stats on your video card? Since you're getting to the point of screensets and toolpaths loading when it crashes, I'm wondering if that is too much for your video card to handle.
-Bryanna
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Hi Bryanna--
We're not using a video card - just the onboard, built-in graphics capabilities of the motherboard. So it's the Intel G41 chipset, with the stock Intel driver. Which seems to be working completely fine for everything else; the machine is very quick and snappy and responsive, in every way. Except Mach4 won't run.
--dave
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Dave,
Mach4 is a very graphics intensive program. Our recommended requirements for using Mach4 include "video Card with 256MB RAM(Large G-code files, especially 3D files will require a video card with 512MB RAM or higher)"
Are you running any other programs along with Mach4?
-Bryanna
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Hi Bryanna,
I use a dual core Atom with on chip graphics without problem. I'm sure your recommendation is well
meant but my installation runs perfectly well on a VERY much less well specified system.
Craig
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Craig,
I'm sure your recommendation is well meant but my installation runs perfectly well on a VERY much less well specified system.
My recommendation is well meant and the official recommendation for use with our software. We can only support a finite number of possible software/hardware combinations. Based on my experience the issue that is being described in this thread can be caused by an issue with graphics, which is why I mentioned it.
I did want to ask about the OP about the shortcut I can see in the original image, though: Static GUI. Is that the shortcut created during installation?
-Bryanna
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Hi again Bryanna--
Thanks for steering us in the correct direction, which by the way is what you've done.
I put an Nvidia graphics card with 1GB of memory into the machine, and now Mach4 seems to start normally. I wouldn't have guessed that it was the PC's onboard graphics capabilities that was blocking things up, but so it was.
Well now on to getting a profile for my machine, etc.
Thanks again--
--dave
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Bryanna--
By the way: About the "Static GUI" shortcut you noticed. I'm not sure how that got onto the desktop. After we reinstalled everything this morning, it was no longer there. Then out of curiosity, Bryce (here) found the shortcut again with the normal Win7 search, and inadvertently dragged it to the desktop. So now it's back on the desktop, and we have no idea where it came from originally. Or, what it is supposed to do. But, anyway it seems to be something that we don't really need?
--dave
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Dave,
It's not something I've seen before, so I was just curious. I usually use the Mach4 Loader icon to open Mach4 as I have a bunch of profiles I juggle between support and testing. If you only use one profile, you can set up a shortcut to open that profile directly, but that boils down to preference. You can definitely scrap the Static GUI shortcut and stick with one of those.
-Bryanna
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Curious, I searched for the Static GUI shortcut, which I'd never seen before.. Sure enough it was present and it points to the wxMach screen set. So it can indeed be safely deleted.
Allan