Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: ODBC Updated - DDBs now won't open!!!

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <marjan@vom.com>]

<x-flowed>
Hey, how much fun would printed circuit design be without these little 
challenges?

At 09:17 AM 9/11/00 +1000, Linden Doyle wrote:

>I just now have tried to create a new DDB from scratch as you suggest.
>Protel throws up an Access Violation when I try to import a PCB document 
>into it
>         Access Violation at address 00447531 in Module "Client99SE.EXE"
>         Exception occurred in CreateNewDocument
>If I reply with Ignore the system continues for a little while before it 
>eventually spits the dummy and pops up the blue screen of death. I have 
>repeated this a couple of times - it does not seem to be a one-off crash.
>
>I'd be happy to get the system back to the way it was before I started 
>fiddling - Gerber errors and all!
>Has anyone any ideas - should I reinstal Win98 or Protel (or both!)??

Before that there are a couple of things to try. Try opening one of the 
sample ddbs. It'll probably crash, but, hey, it's easy to do.

The good news: if it's crashing when fed anything at all, your original 
ddbs are probably intact. Don't even try to open them until sample files 
work properly and you can create new files.

Assuming that nothing will load properly, then reinstall Protel. Pay 
special attention to the client.ini and client.rcs files. (These are, I 
think, in Windows/System.) If I have any customization to save, I'd hide 
those files somewhere and let the install process create new ones.

Only if that fails would I start worrying about the Windows system itself, 
or, perish the thought, the hardware. Make any changes recently?

I still haven't done it myself, but I should have installed W2000. The only 
reason I tolerate system problems, plus the resource shortage described in 
other recent posts, is inertia, and the lack of a Round Tuit. But I haven't 
had anything really nasty happen in a long, long time, and, with the 
exception that I have to watch my resources carefully, Protel works better 
than many other programs I have, supposedly designed by professionals, 
don't try this at home....

To answer another current question, it's obvious that I haven't seriously 
tested W2000, but we have many reports of stable operation of W2000 and 
Protel. This also seems to be true for W/NT. I *have* installed W2000 on my 
notebook, which was already an NT machine. Instead of reinstalling W98, 
this might be a good time to pop for W2000. The cost is negligible compared 
to all the fun we are having staying with W98.... :-)

marjan@vom.com
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433



</x-flowed>