sometimes when a Mach Crash occurs, (mach dissappears off your screen), but yet its process is still running. (i.e. if you double click the Icon to restart it, nothing happens).
Also when you pull up Windows Task manager and look under "Processes", you will see "Mach3.exe" running there but you will not see it under applicaitons as running.......
Even if you click on it in Task Manager>Processes and click "End Now" several times, nothing happens......
You have Two choices, Reboot the entire computer, (not fun), OR:
1). Goto you Task Manager window (hit Control-Alt-Del) that should bring up a selection, choose task manager.
You will see the "mach3.exe" running under the "processes" Tab.
2). Now, go to the menu bar above and Click View>Select Columbs..
3). In that window Tick the box for "PID" Process Number, that will bring up another columb in task manager so you can see all the PID's for running processes.
4). Now leave that window open.
5). Now pull up the Command interface (used to be the DOS interface), usually under: Start>(All)Programs>Accessories>Command Prompt
6). Now lets say
for Example that you see that the "Mach3.exe" PID number is:
40487). Now in that Window after the cursor prompt type (case important here): TASKKILL /F /PID 4048 /T
. Now hit the enter Key, if you look at the Processes under task manager, you will see the "Mach3.exe" disappear
9). You can NOW restart Mach3 if you so choose.
I do alot of Playing around with Mach3 doing crazy stuff, VB, plugins, sometimes find bugs, and since I run a Vista laptop as my R&D computer, I got real, real, real tired of rebooting it (takes a good 8 minutes to reboot). So I dug around in the command interface and found this little jewel, so far works everytime, and I can restart Mach and keep poking it......
Scott