It’s been one of those days, actually two days. Finish a deployment for AutoCAD Architecture, test it and find it works perfectly until you shut down. Then, after a short delay, “Bong”!*
Running filemon I found that an acad.err file was being written/updated after shutdown with an error message:
FATAL ERROR: Unhandled Access Violation Reading 0xc144614 Exception at 622d51cch [current day] at [shutdown time] drawing:
The only event in System Monitor was the licence service stopping and there was no Windows or Autodesk CER. Even worse, it only happened when my customised profile was current. The default profiles were “bong-less”. This turned out to be a vital clue, but thats easy to say with hindsight. Adding confusion, I hadn’t seen this with previous ADT 2006 & 2007 builds using the same profile settings.
Since the custom profile includes a myriad of options the only way was to start from scratch. I copied the default profile, bong-less, then added an item/path/preference, then closed down waiting for the “bong” or hoping for an “absence of bong”. Eventually I found the cause was Civil 3D object pollution in the template I was using. How Civil 3D got in there I don’t know but without it’s object enabler installed, and the proxy object dialog off, the only indication of any problem was a “bong” & acad.err log.
The solution was to create a clean template: no more Civil 3D stuff, no more bong. Since there is likely already Civil 3D polluted content out there, and we do see the occasional Civil 3D file, I also added the Civil 3D Object Enabler to the build. The default profiles were fine because they use different templates. So why didn’t ADT 2006/7 bong & error with same template and no enabler installed? I don’t know…
* I’m a Spike Milligan fan. “Bong” was actually “Windows XP Critical Stop.wav” but using that wouldn’t allow me to misquote Spike’s wonderful “Silly verse for kids” which I loved as a kid, and still do…
Top poetry is complete nonsense - (includes “On The Ning Nang Nong” text) - BBC News
