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General Mach Discussion / Major problem reinstalling Mach3 after running for years
« on: May 07, 2014, 03:44:45 AM »
Where to begin? I have been running Mach3 MILL for many years. Last month the blue screen of death reared it's ugly head. So I searched and searched and found that it was due to multiple capacitors had "blown" on the motherboard preventing Mach to run correctly. *lets skip forward a bit* So I picked up a new pc, Dell Dimension 2400 running XP, and went through the install process. I did the parallel port driver install and the system rebooted, driver test passed with flying colors. Then tried to run the program in the profile I created during the set-up. Program loaded, setup homing, hotkeys, etc...loaded a g-code that I have used in the past. (during all this the router is not connected and still not connected for safety purposes) hit start and 5 lines in the code stops and then jumps to the very end never showing the tool "trail" or movement of any kind in the window. The xyz display never changed from 0 either. After fiddling around I finally decided I must have installed something wrong. Uninstalled program and the PPort driver. Installed with the same results.
now this is where it get funky......For some reason I decided to boot the pc in safe mode and even though the res was way off (lol) I managed to start the mill program and load the same code as above.(very important to remember all of this is in mill so far. ) Now everything is working properly, even though the res was way off the xyz display followed the to and the tool had it's "trail" and the gcode ran through every line fine. So, then I figure there has to be something interfering in the background. I go through the suggested (almost 3 page) optimization shutting off a ton of stuff, I couldn't tell you what they do exactly, uninstall everything again and another install of program. Still the same effect as the above while running in normal mode..nada, still something wrong with no improvement.
I must have uninstalled a dozen times in the past month lol with a side of
and 
.
This last time I decided to make my own profile for the mill, lathe and plasma. The standard mill and my mill profile still have no change. I got to thinking about the lathe profile and didn't think the mill code would work correctly. So I decided not to check it. But now that I am typing this I guess I could have at least checked to see if I could jog the "tool". I'll post a follow up in the morning after I try it in both the standard and the one I created for the lathe..
Now here is the huge kicker.....The plasma profiles, both the standard and the one I created. run the code perfectly. What in the world is going on? Oh, also...I thought that it might be the pc in general but I also installed Mach into my kids HP Pavillion running xp and got the exact same results. Also, for some reason I thought that my original download might have been corrupted after years of being on my flash drive and the problems above. I downloaded it from the site again, fresh copy I guess you could call it. No change... These have all been done in both demo and licensed copies.
So I guess the big question is....what in the world is going on. Frustrated beyond belief I am out of ideas, please tell me someone has the answer.
Is the file corrupt?
Did I miss a step???
This will be posted here and the cnczone forums as well to try and get this figured out.
now this is where it get funky......For some reason I decided to boot the pc in safe mode and even though the res was way off (lol) I managed to start the mill program and load the same code as above.(very important to remember all of this is in mill so far. ) Now everything is working properly, even though the res was way off the xyz display followed the to and the tool had it's "trail" and the gcode ran through every line fine. So, then I figure there has to be something interfering in the background. I go through the suggested (almost 3 page) optimization shutting off a ton of stuff, I couldn't tell you what they do exactly, uninstall everything again and another install of program. Still the same effect as the above while running in normal mode..nada, still something wrong with no improvement.
I must have uninstalled a dozen times in the past month lol with a side of
and . This last time I decided to make my own profile for the mill, lathe and plasma. The standard mill and my mill profile still have no change. I got to thinking about the lathe profile and didn't think the mill code would work correctly. So I decided not to check it. But now that I am typing this I guess I could have at least checked to see if I could jog the "tool". I'll post a follow up in the morning after I try it in both the standard and the one I created for the lathe..
Now here is the huge kicker.....The plasma profiles, both the standard and the one I created. run the code perfectly. What in the world is going on? Oh, also...I thought that it might be the pc in general but I also installed Mach into my kids HP Pavillion running xp and got the exact same results. Also, for some reason I thought that my original download might have been corrupted after years of being on my flash drive and the problems above. I downloaded it from the site again, fresh copy I guess you could call it. No change... These have all been done in both demo and licensed copies.
So I guess the big question is....what in the world is going on. Frustrated beyond belief I am out of ideas, please tell me someone has the answer.
Is the file corrupt?
Did I miss a step???
This will be posted here and the cnczone forums as well to try and get this figured out.