just purchased myself a brand new dell inspiron laptop, i3 processor, 6gb ram.

my cnc setup is mach3 with ESS.

when running the cnc I keep getting the low data warning and mach stops mid program. am not in the workshop at the moment so cant get a screen print of error.

all I have open on the laptop is mach3, cambam, autocad 2006 and a single internet explorer page. I used to run much more on my old laptop

I never had this issue on my 8 year old laptop, just my brand new one.

please help

all I have open on the laptop is mach3, cambam, autocad 2006 and a single internet explorer page. I used to run much more on my old laptop

The recommendation is that you can run all these applications on your laptop but not whilst Mach3 is running.

Tweakie.

gee, thanks

I might as well just carry on using my 8 year old laptop then

what is the lookahead set at?

don't know, where is that option located?

General configuration tab.... explained here: http://warp9td.com/index.php/faq/faq-mach3#WatchdogOrRunsOutOfData

suggestion, have a work through the warp9 FAQ section as it is way better than the manuals ever were and covers a whole raft of common items.

you've also not mentioned what (your new laptop) operating system you are running, but presuming its W10, then there have been issues with automatic updates stopping the ess communicating with the PC because W10 is doing some antivirus stuff.

Really the best solution for cnc is to have a dedicated cnc PC.... so it has one purpose in life.... ok, my setup is a little different, I have a cheap old PC running XP, 2gb graphics card (didn't have another purpose for it), 4gb ram I think and a hdd (may upgrade to SSD at some point, the 120gb drives without a case seem nice and cheap at the moment).   no antivirus, just windows with all the updates, an old copy of autocad (so I can convert dwg's to dxf and do minor mods), sheetcam , and my cnc software (mach3, mach4, uccnc) and it runs happy feeding it memory sticks with software and gcode / sheetcam job files.  If I were you, I'd clear out your 8 year old laptop (reformat, maybe SSD, max ram it will take) and load up whatever flavour of windows you prefer (and that your laptop has drivers for)..... note, some laptops have a emergency boot partition which holds the backup copy of windows .... need to read the manual of how you get a complete reinstall from it but it will have all your drivers.... although its sometimes beneficial to go to the manufacturers website and get the latest drives and bios updates and once they are loaded you should never have to do them again..... I would turn off the wifi on a laptop too so that its not potentially polling when trying to run cnc software.

been working through the ess guide as posted above but I'm having an issue where mach wont save any settings I change.

so if I change the look ahead and click save settings, restart mach and they haven't saved.

if I change the watchdog to 3.1 and click save, again restart mach and its not saved.

whats going on here?

Type the number in, press the enter key, then apply or save settings before changing tabs.

To load settings into the ess, shutdown and restart mach3...

Let us know if it worked

no when I shut down mach and restart settings are not saved

tool table wont save
general config wont save
ess config wont save