FM2015 crashing when opening FM8.1 files

[Pedalleurke]

Hi there

When using FM 2015 to open all chapter files in any FM 8.1 book of our legacy documentation, FM crashes after executing the task (Internal error). FM first says conversion will take place, then opens all files, goes into "not responding" and crashes. Crash is not on one particular file or book.

Books open fine in FM 2015 on other machines.

Tried the following:

• checked software updates: OK
• de-installing/re-installing FM2015: no result
• opening chapter files one by one, still crash after last file opened
• If colleague opens the files and saves them as FM2015 files, I have no issue opening them, so I guess something goes wrong doing the conversion.
• I do have full admin rights on my machine and on the maker.ini.
• only workaround no is to open the recovery files afther the crash and save them as originals, but this is not an option considering the large number of files in the books

I can send the error report FM generates upon crashing.

thanks

Dave

Message was edited by: Jeff Coatsworth All refs changed from FM2017 to FM2015

[ksaini]

Hi Dave,

Please share crash logs to me at ksaini@adobe.com.

Just want to double check if this crash is happening on more than one machine.

Thanks

Kunal

[Pedalleurke]

Hi Kunal,

I just sent you the most recent log. I'm on win7 SP1 by the way.

thanks

David

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

The fact that you said that they upgrade fine on another machine, but not on yours indicates that there's something going on with your machine's instance of FM2015. You have 2 approaches - try to figure out what's different between the "good" install & your "bad" install or, just let the other machine do the upgrading and carry on from there. Your choice ;>)

[Pedalleurke]

Hi Jeff,

Unfortunately the other machine actually belongs to a subcontractor in another location. I'm afraid I won't get away with asking them to pre-process all those books :-).

By the way it should be FM2015 of course...

I'm indeed trying to figure out what the difference is between the machines and found some tips on this forum as well, but until now no joy...

best regards

Dave

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Are you saying that all refs to FM2017 should read "FM2015"? I can change that (probably), but you know that FM2017 just got released, right?

[Pedalleurke]

It's the 2015 (aka 13) alright. Got confused with Flare 2017 which is on my PC as well.

[Pedalleurke]

thanks for changing 🙂

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Got it - think I've managed to get it changed over now. Your use of "FM2017 crashing" was what probably got the staff member's attention so soon.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

BTW - you said that you tried reinstalling FM2015, did you then apply all the patches that have come out since its release?

[Pedalleurke]

Yes, did that through FM/help/updates.

My version is now 13.0.5.547 which matches the version after update 5.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

And the files are still crashing when upgrading?

[Pedalleurke]

Correct.

I open the book, select all files, hit enter. Then the message comes up asking to convert from 8 to 2015. I click yes. Then FM opens all files and after the last file has been opened it hangs and crashes.

Nothing to do with that last file, if I select random 10 chapters and repeat the process, the same thing happens, it crashes after the last selected file has been opened.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

And how's it behave if you just open one file, convert it, save it, then close it - any crashing then?

[Pedalleurke]

When I open a single chapter file it works fine and FM doesn't even tell me it's opening a 8 release-file that needs converting. It only tells me if I open a book file.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

That's probably because you checked off the "Do not show again" option on the upgrading message box - it's still there, but you've suppressed it. I would proceed by doing each file one-by-one until they are all converted (you made backups before you started, right?) or you hit something that throws an error.

[Pedalleurke]

Ok, I will give that a go and get back with the result. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Pedalleurke  wrote

I open the book, select all files, hit enter.

It's not clear from your response, but the proper method to open all files in a book is to press the shift key before clicking on the File menu, and then select Open All Files. You don't need to pre-select all files in the book window. Perhaps this may be causing an issue?

[Pedalleurke]

Hi Arnis,

I gave that a try but it gave me the same result.

I also tried opening the chapter files one by one to see if there would be a glitch in one of them. It turned out there was one on which FM crashed. I managed to open it, save as mif and then as fm again, and it was fine, but at the next attempt to open all files, yet another file was causing a crash.

[Arnis_Gubins]

David,

It sounds like you've got some cruft in the old 8.1 files [did these have any content imported from Word or other sources?]. Mif-washing all of the files, like you did for the one file, is probably the best way to go to get clean, working files for FM2015.

If you still have a version of FM8.1 around (or any later versions), you could try using the RoboMIF utility to make the save as MIF easier & faster. You can still get it here:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/robohelp/files/downloads/htmlhelp/robomif.zip

Also for future-proofing against corruption in FM files, you could try installing Chis Despopoulos' (Cud) SafetyMIF utility. This will always save a copy of your file(s) as MIF whenever you do a Save or SaveAs in FM. The last update was from FM11, but I've used it in FM12, so it still may work for later versions. It's available here: http://www.cudspan.net/plugins