i was just cutting away and used the "edit g-code" button. did my editing, closed to save and the dam mach3 just locks up. i closed it down and now my mach wont get past the timeout error getting data.

i changed nothing and there is no smoke in the room. what gives?

i have the green and blue lights lit on the ss.

Unplug the SS and plug it in again, restart Mach, should do it.

gggoooood! i did all that before and of coarse now that some one says to try that it works.

why did this happen?

Before your second post, I KNEW you had a smoothstepper, that's the error you get trying to restart Mach3 after the SS has lost communication.

The SS lost communication with the computer. It happens and there have been many sort-of solutions here and on the warp9 forum. Look there or here for possible things to try, or perhaps one of the experts will pop in and point you. I don't remember where all this talk took place. It was mostly to do with grounding, but also powering the SS from an external 5v power supply, plugging the SS into a powered USB hub instead of the pc directly, and other solutions, none of which were really definitive!! Search around and try some of these things, different USB cable, power from external 5v supply, USB hub, cutting the outside metal shield off the SS end of the USB cable (carefully!!), unsoldering some stuff on the SS itself (I never went there!)

This can also have a lot to do with your settings in Mach or even other programs running on the PC. Please take a look at: http://www.soigeneris.com/Documentation-content.aspx and look in the SmoothStepper section for the Installation tips. That should help you with the most common causes of problems.

well, milling a piece and she stopped midway. windows 7 was acting like it wanted to update or something on the mach screen but it might have been looking for the smoothstepper.?
now i am back to where i was when i started this thread. losing money.
i might try to update the driver.....

how do i upate the ss driver and plug-in?

Read the document I linked to above

Back to where you were at the start of this thread? How so? Blue and green light on the SS, or do you just mean losing money?

For anyone to suggest a solution, they have to know what's happening. Like what do you mean Windows 7 was acting like it wanted to update or something? Or "it might have been looking for the smoothstepper."

Did you do the suggested SS fixes, separate 5v power, USB hub, better/different USB cable, Jeff's superbe document on setting up the SS?