Flexi freezing up

[Graphic Source]

Hello, I am new here, and I have a huge problem. Already called SA Intl, but so far no real help.

We had been working on Flexi 8v1 for about a year, no problems. We run Windows XP Professional. Last week Flexi kept freezing up on me (not responding) and even the Task manager could not close down the software. I actually had to reboot the computer every time. It happened about 2-4 times each hour, without me doing anything out of the ordinary, just normal cut and paste, importing small bitmaps, printing and ripping...

Anyway, when I got a blue screen in Windows I called in our tech guy and he actually replaced the harddrive, did his virus check, reinstalled Windows etc. Then we actually splurged on updating to Flexi 10, and exactly the same thing is happening! It just freezes up every couple of minutes, sometimes even right after startup, I don't do anything, no documents are open, I walk away and when I come back after 10 mins. it's all frozen up and I need to reboot. I already eliminated that other programs are causing it (running Flexi with and without internet, email, streaming live music, running other programs along with it, etc.), you name it, I did it.

After googling and reading a bit here, and then talking to SA Int'l tech support, I threw away the preferences and reinstalled my printers, and already it's happened 4 times this morning.

Anybody know what is causing it and what I can do?

Thanks, Dan

 

[Charlie J]

Copy, pasting bitmaps has always been tough for me in flexi as well. Running version 8.6v2 on windows 7 here.

 

[choucove]

I would recommend going into your Control Panel, to the Power Options, and change your power scheme to Always On if it isn't already. Also check the Hibernation tab and disable Hibernation if it is selected. Next, I'd open your display properties and turn off your screen saver (or set it to like one hour.) I've seen it before, on other programs but not Flexi yet, where when a computer sits idle long enough to go to screen saver it can cause an open application to just get stuck. I've also seen the problem where power settings were allowing the hard drive to either go to sleep, the whole system goes to sleep, or the system flat out went into hibernation and I have seen that cause Flexi to just freeze up and crash when coming back out of that state.

The other possibility you might want to check is bad memory. It might not be the issue, but if you said you received a blue screen then it's a possibility. You can use a free utility called Memtest86+ (google will show you where to get it and how to run it) and let it scan through all of your memory for any possible errors. I myself have had a stick of memory go bad in my own computer and it caused certain applications to just freeze up suddenly.

 

[Graphic Source]

Hi Choucove,
thanks for the tips. I looked at the power options, but that didn't seem to be the issue. As far as memory goes, I don't want to play with that, as I don't know much about it. We haven't had the issue with the blue screen anymore either, since our computer guy installed new harddrive 2 weeks ago.

I just de-installed the program, and reinstalled it again from scratch on Monday. Still got the same issues. Now I just talked to SAI and the computer guru there de-insatalled and reinstalled it himself, then checked some other processes in the background. He said that we have too many indexing and backups and antivirus things constantly running in the background, which might slow down the program to the point where it freezes up. I will ask my computer guy to take those background processes off and see if this will fix it.

I just think it's weird that it only freezes up Flexi, not Photoshop or my browser or whatever.

Will keep you uptodate. Hope this will work! Dan

 

[Graphic Source]

Ahhh, problem solved! And how easy it was! It was the software key/dongle . I guess it just was old (about 5 years old).

The stinky part of the whole deal was that we wasted a lot of time (4 weeks of program shutting down at least 5-15 times a day, plus talking for hours to tech support which didn't offer any real solutions), material (printing would stop cold in the middle of printing because the program froze up), and purchase of upgrade to Flexi 10, which we really didn't need. All we needed was a new dongle, which runs about $120.

Thank you all for weighing in and giving us some suggestions.
Dan

 

[the graphics co]

How simple the answer can be sometimes. But, they got you to buy the new version which is ultimately their goal. I asked how to fix a problem with flexi 7.6 when i was at the ISA show a couple years ago and the only fix they offered was "buy version 8, and all your problems will be solved"

 

[Freese]

How simple the answer can be sometimes. But, they got you to buy the new version which is ultimately their goal. I asked how to fix a problem with flexi 7.6 when i was at the ISA show a couple years ago and the only fix they offered was "buy version 8, and all your problems will be solved"

That's not necessarily true. Sometimes with so many variables in the older software with the newer machines, it's hard to say.

 

[the graphics co]

You are probably right, it just rubbed me the wrong way that day.

 

[Graphic Source]

LOL
The other thing that "rubbed us the wrong way" was that they wanted us to buy the software key outright, saying our old one was out of warranty. We told them that we wouldn't pay for it, just having upgraded to a version we really didn't need and spending so much time guessing and troubleshooting. So we ended up getting the key for free, just needing to cover the shipping costs. So that was okay, but we really needed to speak up!

Otherwise everything is working great now - what a pleasure!
Dan