Ultiboard 12 Keeps crashing

[Who_Knew]

I have a Toshiba R705-P35 (I3, 8GB RAM, 240GB SSHD, Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit)  Recently installed Circuit design suite 12.  Multisim works fine, but Ultiboard crashes often.

The two main things that I know cause it to crash are:

1. If I use Customize interface and add or subtract a tool bar button from the UI, close the dialog and attempt to use Customize interface to change the toolbar button again.
2. If I use the Part wizard, create and save a part, then attempt to use the part wizard again.  I'm not sure if it's always the second attempt. 

Things I've tried so far:

• Reset the configuration file.
• Repair Circuit Design Suite
• Reinstall Circuit Design Suite from downloaded image from Website (originally installed from CD ROM.

Here's the workaround I came up with so far:  I set up a virtual machine within Win 7 and loaded it with Win 7 Ultimate 32bit OS (virtual machines can only run 32 bit OS, apparently).  Then installed Circuit design suite in that.  Seems to work like a champ. 

It was then that I realized that some other software in my real Win 7 may not be playing nice with the Circuit design suite installation.  Or, Maybe Circuit design suite 12 actually has issues with running on Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit. So then I tried the following things:

• Disabled Microsoft Security Essentials
• Disabled Spybot Search and Destroy

Still, can't keep it from crashing.

[ThiCop]

Hello Who,

Do you get an error message together with the crash?

[Who_Knew]

Hi Thierry,

When it crashes, Win 7 includes this info in the crash report that it sends back to MS when it checks online to see if there is a solution to the problem.

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:    APPCRASH
  Application Name:    ultiboard.exe
  Application Version:    12.0.653.0
  Application Timestamp:    4f35cc7b
  Fault Module Name:    ntdll.dll
  Fault Module Version:    6.1.7601.17725
  Fault Module Timestamp:    4ec49b8f
  Exception Code:    c015000f
  Exception Offset:    000847db
  OS Version:    6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
  Locale ID:    1033
  Additional Information 1:    0a9e
  Additional Information 2:    0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e7

89
  Additional Information 3:    0a9e
  Additional Information 4:    0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Thanks,

Who

[Who_Knew]

OK, here's some good news.  I'm ashamed I haven't tried this yet:  I started Win 7 in safe mode, and then started UB.  I couldn't get it to crash. 

Now I need to figure out what non-safe mode item is conflicting with UB.  Not sure how to go about that...

[ThiCop]

Hello Who Knew,

It did a quick google search and it seems like there's a whole range of possible causes for ntdll.dll error messages:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/a/ntdlldll.htm

I haven't seen this error before, so it would be my first advise to go through these possible solutions.

A second search lead me to the following topic:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/programs-close-faulting-...

Especially check the first post, because this seems to be your specific case.

[Who_Knew · Accepted solution]

Hi Thierry,

Using msconfig.exe, I was able to eliminate all of the services as the culprit.  I then moved on to the startup items, thankfully only 24 of them.  Eliminated 12 in the first attempt, then another 6 in the second attempt.  Anyway, it turned out to be a conflict with Roboform.  That's disappointing because I really like Roboform too.  Anyway, at least now I have a way to get some work done

Thanks for all the help.

[ThiCop]

Good luck with your further simulation and design tasks!

[Who_Knew]

NI Support came through on this one. 

As mentioned before, Roboform interfered with Customize interface.

Aside:  I opened a support case with Roboform form and they gave me a solution to the interference issue.  Roboform has a setting that lets it try to attach to all windows dialogs and programs or not.  Or, if attach to all windows programs and dialogs is turned on, you can make Roboform selectively skip attachment.  I have instructed it to exclude attachment to UB and no more issues with Customize interface.

So that got working right, but another crashing issue persisted.  I couldn't create or edit a part without UB crashing.  That, we found out, was due to the configuration file being corrupted.  The configuration file was likely corrupted when there was a conflict between Roboform and UB.  After straightening that out, the other crashing issue didn't go away until I deleted the config file (UB creates a new default one).

Now everything's OK.

PS:  Roboform says on their next release, Roboform will avoid attaching to UB by default.

Problem solved!  I just worked with UB for a whole 2 hours and not a single crash.

[ThiCop]

Hello Who,

Thanks for the feedback!