VW won't start

[JHEarcht]

Vectorworks 2013 on WindowsXP

General license, not subscription

I am a retired architect, so I don't use VW very often. Just a couple of months ago though, it was working properly. Nothing pertaining to VW has changed since then. Now, when I double click on the shortcut or the VW icon, nothing happens except a brief hourglass.

Assuming that something was corrupted I reinstalled VW from scratch, including serial number and registration. Still, nothing happens when I click the icon, or right click and Open. It won't start, and it won't even "crank".

Any suggestions to get VW working again will be appreciated.

Edited October 8, 2015 by JHEarcht

[Art V]

Did you try running it as administrator?

I had a similar problem in the past and it turned out it would only work when run as administrator for some reason, but these were older versions of Vectorworks, but on XP. Never had the problem on Vistas and newer as far as I can recall.

[JHEarcht]

Art V, thanks for the suggestion.

I am the administrator and the only user. I've never had to do anything special in order to start VW. What worked a few months ago is not working now, even after a new clean install.

If I was going to run as administrator, how would I identify myself if I can't open the program?

Any more ideas?

[Art V]

Right click on the icon and select run as administrator from the pop-up menu.

Another option is to open the properties of the shortcut to Vectorworks and then tick the "run as administrator" option so that it is active.

That way Vectorworks should run with administrator rights.

Even if you are the administrator that does not always mean that programs you install will run with full administrator rights by default.

[JHEarcht]

Art V

Thanks again. but the program still won't start even when I run as administrator.

What could possibly prevent the icon from starting? It makes a brief access of the hard drive, but then nothing.

When I selected RUN on the Windows menu, and typed in Vectorworks2013.exe, the error message said : "Windows cannot find 'vectorworks2013.exe'. So I entered RUN 'C:\Program Files\Vectorworks2013\vectorworks2013.exe', and still nothing happened. The info box for the VW icon says 26.2MB. So the data seems to be there.

I'd call NNA, but VW2013 is presumably "out of warranty". Any other ideas?

PS__I just discovered that Vectorworks doesn't show-up in Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs. VW Help does show-up in the list. This could result from a glitch in the most recent install, but doesn't explain why the original install was working before and then, with no change to VW, stopped responding to clicks on the icon.

Edited October 11, 2015 by JHEarcht

[Art V]

Art V

When I selected RUN on the Windows menu, and typed in Vectorworks2013.exe, the error message said : "Windows cannot find 'vectorworks2013.exe'. So I entered RUN 'C:\Program Files\Vectorworks2013\vectorworks2013.exe', and still nothing happened. The info box for the VW icon says 26.2MB. So the data seems to be there.

I'd call NNA, but VW2013 is presumably "out of warranty". Any other ideas?

PS__I just discovered that Vectorworks doesn't show-up in Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs. VW Help does show-up in the list. This could result from a glitch in the most recent install, but doesn't explain why the original install was working before and then, with no change to VW, stopped responding to clicks on the icon.

It looks like there may be a registry problem as result from a failed install.

Try reinstalling as administrator (i.e. use run as administrator for the installer)

Another option could be that the Vectorworks folder in Program Files and/or the Vectorworks folder in the AppData folders (local and roaming) or subfolders/files in these folders are set to read only. Then Vectorworks may not be able to access all necessary files it needs write access to.

Removing any read only settings from those files might be an option that could help. If that does not work you probably need to try another reinstall after manually removing all vectorworks program references in the registry.

The following page may be helpful for manually removing Vectorworks:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/1105/Uninstalling+Vectorworks

Edited October 11, 2015 by Art V

[PVA - Admin]

The quick hourglass and then nothing is often something conflicting with Vectorworks, on Windows XP its likely a graphics driver, but post the following from your machine and I can have a look:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/627/DirectX+Diagnostics+and+System+Profiler

[JHEarcht]

Jim W

I manually uninstalled VW from the Registry following instructions in the knowledgebase, as suggested by ArtV. Then I installed it again, but this time on an external hard drive F: The install proceeded normally, and VW files are located in the Programs folder on drive F:. However, VW still doesn't appear in Control Panel under Add or Remove Programs. The Installer Log has a few errors referring to the Registry, and VW does not appear in Registry/Current User/Software.

2015-10-11 16:00:40,703 INFO Error attempting to fetch registry entries

EnumerateRegistryValues

2015-10-11 16:00:40,703 INFO WindowsError: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file specified

I created a DxDiag file on the desktop, but I don't see a way to attach it to this post.

PS__The original install of VW2013 had stopped working even though both Nemetschek and Vectorworks were in the Registry.

Edited October 12, 2015 by JHEarcht

[PVA - Admin]

When posting, click "Switch to Full Reply Screen" then click File manager, add the file, then click Done adding Files and it'll be included in your post at the bottom.

[JHEarcht]

When posting, click "Switch to Full Reply Screen" then click File manager, add the file, then click Done adding Files and it'll be included in your post at the bottom.

I don't see an option for "Switch to Full Reply Screen" in the Reply dialog. I was using "Reply" instead of "Quick Reply".

Edited October 12, 2015 by JHEarcht

[JHEarcht]

I tried to attach the file with File Manager, but I don't see any confirmation that it was added.

[PVA - Admin]

You did it correctly.

Your graphics driver is from 1999. That probably got rolled back at some point not by you. This is the most recent driver for your graphics card from Nvidia:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/5338/en-us

Download and install the above driver, reboot your computer completely, then retry Vectorworks.

[JHEarcht]

JimW

Thanks again for the suggestion. During install an error message popped up : "the drivers you are installing are older than the drivers currently installed." So I cancelled the installation.

The basic problem here seems to be that something has prevented the VW2013 installer from adding VW to the registry. Currently, there is no Vectorworks or Nemetschek in the registry under Current User/Software. Before the latest install there were entries for both, but I manually deleted then per instructions in this thread. VW2013 does appear under Start/All Programs, but not under Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs. All the program files are there, but WinXP does not recognize VW as a program.

I tried to associate the VW2013 icon with the Vectorworks2013.exe file, but Open With was not available upon right click, and Open simply makes an hourglass, then nothing. I'll try to upload a screenshot of the file properties.

The current installer was downloaded directly from the NNA website. Any more ideas???

Edited October 15, 2015 by JHEarcht

[Art V]

Did you try "run as administrator" for the install file?

When I was using XP and had to reinstall sometimes it worked by running the installer the normal way and sometimes I had to use "run as administrator" for the installer to even get it working at all.

[PVA - Admin]

Vectorworks 2013 will not show up in Add/Remove programs on Windows. It did in Vectorworks 7 or 8 and then didn't again until Vectorworks 2016, mainly since we didn't have an uninstaller.

Go ahead and run the driver installation as suggested regardless of the erroneous warning, there are no older drivers than the 1999 ones you had installed when i checked your dxdiag. Let me know the results.

[JHEarcht]

Vectorworks 2013 will not show up in Add/Remove programs on Windows. It did in Vectorworks 7 or 8 and then didn't again until Vectorworks 2016, mainly since we didn't have an uninstaller.

Go ahead and run the driver installation as suggested regardless of the erroneous warning, there are no older drivers than the 1999 ones you had installed when i checked your dxdiag. Let me know the results.

Even though the installer said the new video driver was older than the current one, I went ahead with the install. The installation had several problems, but I kept it going: "can't access the file because it is being used by another process"; "Windows could not find the driver"" . . . . and another file"". I had to restart Windows twice for some unknown reason. When the install was finished, the screen resolution was different, and I eventually had to do a manual shut-down and restart. After that I reset the resolution, and clicked on the VW shortcut.

This time the hard drive sped up for several minutes as-if it was loading VW, but beyond that nothing happened. I still can't get VW to start.

Any new ideas?

[PVA - Admin]

Thats very bad, that sounds like something is significantly wrong with the OS itself, a driver install should never be that problematic.

You can try resetting Vectorworks preferences:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/1099/Resetting+Vectorworks+Preferences

However, most likely the issue is outside of Vectorworks itself. We no longer have support for Vectorworks 2013 and Microsoft has finally killed off XP, its not a good place to be stuck.

[JHEarcht]

JimW

The OS works fine with all other installs. Over many years of computer and software conflicts, I've been told repeatedly by tech support that the problem is in the other guy's stuff. But I usually just keep doggedly plodding on, and somehow eventually reach a resolution.

I plan to try to install VW on my new Win10 computer. But it is currently unusable due to a glitch in Win10 regarding the monitor output (long sad story). I've been trying for several weeks to work around the problem, but so far, nothing has worked, and I'm using it as a paperweight.

Maybe I need to just get out of the computer business altogether.

Pray for me. :cry:

Edited October 17, 2015 by JHEarcht

[JHEarcht]

VW2013 on WinXP

Let's start this thread all over again:

My copy of VW2013 on my old WinXP computer has stopped working. It worked fine just a few months ago, but now clicking the icon has no effect. After following all the suggestions above, I have given up on getting it to work on my old computer.

So I tried to move the VW2013 Install files over to my new Win10 PC. But after answering YES to the "Do You Want to Run this Program" nothing happens. So I went back to the original email from a couple of years ago with a link to the NNA server, and tried to download the install files. But the mail app gives me an error message : "access denied" and "this XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it."

I was able to download the file to WinXP. Any idea why it won't work on Win10?

I never received a DVD after I originally downloaded the install files for VW2013. Is there any other way I can obtain a clean install file?

PS__I'm sending an email to Alice Lowey with NNA, but I don't know if she is still in the same position.