FM2019 crashes opening a formerly good .fm file

[kinabalu2]

I have FM2019 15.0.8.979 installed - the latest version for that edition. I can open some of my (smaller) .fm files but my largest one crashes with Internal error 15084. I have sent the dump file to Adobe as requested but of course have not heard from them. Internal errors are always the fault of the app.

I have lots of backups of the .fm document of various vintages but most fail. I did get one to open but it looked very corrupted. I immediately created a mif file of this but when I tried to open the mif file, my PC spun for a couple of hours before I killed it.

I have tried the shortcut to avoid the checking on opening but that didn't help either.

Any advice please?

[kinabalu2]

Update on the above. I installed a trial version of FM2020 and read in the offending document OK with that. I saved as FM2019 format but got the same error as above when I tried to open it in FM2019.

[LinSims]

Did you save from FM2020 to FM2019, or FM2020 to MIF? I suggest saving to MIF and then opening in 2019. Make sure you backup the MIF file somewhere.

[kinabalu2]

Thanks for your reply.

I saved from FM2020 to .fm(2019) and to .mif and to .mif(7.0).

None of these worked - they all gave the same internal error 15084. So yes, I did save to mif and opened in 2019.

I get the following message in the console when opening both 2020 and 7.0 mif files:

<filename>.mif (13519) Invalid opcode: DFNoteKeepWithAnchor - Skipping these characters: 0>---Done skipping.

With the 2020 mif file, the above error number changes from 13519 to 14004 but the message is otherwise the same.

[kinabalu2]

Another update on my original comment:

This document is important to me so I have spent some time trying to recover it for my purchased version of FM (i.e. FM2019).

Since I could open it in FM2020, I decided to track down the offending item using a binary search, splitting the 250 page document in two and exporting from FM2020 to FM2019 format then attempting to open the 2019 format doc in FM2019. One half would fail and the other one would succeed. I kept doing this with the failed half until I found the problem. It turned out to be a frame with some graphic (eps) inserts. I deleted this and then opened the whole document bar the insert with no problem (so far).

I then thought that the eps might be a problem (from Ghostscript) so replaced that with a pdf. I recompiled both FM2019 and 2020 formats. Both opened. I remade the FM2020 pdf file with distiller with no problem.

However, while scrolling through the FM2019 document  it would suddenly crash (near where the old problem was) and it refused to distil the whole document to pdf, again giving the 15084 internal error.

My conclusion is that FM2020 is working fine but that FM2019 is fundamentally broken. I don't know what it is but it may have something to do with inserting graphic images, surely the bread-and-butter of FM.

[Winfried Reng]

Hi,

There could easily be another problematic graphics file. You could again split the document into halfs and try to locate the issue.

Does it help, when you hide all graphics (View | Options)?

Generally FM 2019 does not have issues with graphics. I used it all the time with lots of EPS graphics.

When you have checked that there isn´t another problematic graphics file, you could also write to the support: tcssup@adobe.com

Best regards

Winfried

[kinabalu2]

Thanks very much for that suggestion - I was not aware of it, or had forgotten it.

So turning off the graphics via the Options tab has made scrolling the entire document work well.

I have 6 documents in this book. I then tried to generate the book pdf and it sailed through the original bad document but then failed on a later one, again with error 15084.

So I turned the graphics off on that one, and then the whole book generated the pdf but obviously without lots of graphics.

Doing the binary search is tedious on large docments especially given the scrolling with FM. Is there a short cut to highlight a range of pages to cut/copy?  At present, I scroll slowly down with the  shift-down arrow.

[Winfried Reng]

With binary search you mean that you split the document in two halfs and check which has this error, don't you?

Yes. That's OK what you do. You could also place the insertion mark at the start and then press SHIFT and hold it pressed and then click at the end of the text which you want to select.

Here are some shortcuts to navigate in a document. Some work also when you press SHIFT to select something:

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/using/index.html#t=using-framemaker%2Fuser-guide%2FWSd817046...

[K.Daube]

Hi Kinabalu2,

I have FM2019 15.0.8.979 installed - the latest version for that edition.

How did you get this update ...979? I'm on ...973 and when I ask to update it says "Your app is already up to date.". As far as I know ...979 is a release candidate, but not yet listed in http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=22&platform=Windows

[kinabalu2]

Interesting. I can't really remember but I'm pretty sure it would have been through the official update mechanism. I didn't go through any devious means to get it for sure. Maybe it was a mistake on Adobe's part or they have pulled it. I certainly would like to go back to a stable version. Is that possible?

[Winfried Reng]

Download one of the latest version (in my rememberance update 7 had some bugs, but I am not sure) from here:

https://supportdownloads.adobe.com/product.jsp?product=22&platform=Windows

Test, whether this is really a full setup or only an update. (At least until FM 2017 the updates were just an update of the latest version.) If this is a full setup, then uninstall FrameMaker 2019 and install this download.

Then go to Help | Update and update to the current version.

[kinabalu2]

I uninstalled FM2019-8 and installed FM2019-7 (it is now 'up to date').

I could open all the documents and scroll through them with the graphics off on two of the original documents but unlike before with 2019-8, it crashed on making the book pdf. This time the crash was 'Postprocessing pdf document' after it seemed to have gone through all the documents.

The error number was 15074 which is somewhat similar to the error number from vsn 8 (15084) and suggests the same underlying problem (error number 4?)

So this seems to have been a step backwards as I could get a pdf before, albeit without many graphics.

[kinabalu2]

Just an update. Thanks everyone above for trying to help me. After going round in circles on the web trying to find Adobe FrameMaker support (no reply from tcssup@adobe.com), I eventually found the support I needed at techcomm@adobe.com. I got an instant response from Shivang and he guided me through various tests. Eventually he tested the 'bad' file himself and found it OK so I concluded that there was something wrong with my PC. Reluctantly I re-installed Windows 10 and then FM2019 and everything else. FM then read the files OK but refused to produce a pdf. I could not get the Adobe pdf printer to install. Again Shivang was very helpful and yesterday, a colleague of his did a remote logon to my PC and solved the problem, albeit after an hour or so of furious typing and head scratching. I think the problem was another pdf printer instance (from ABBYY FineReader) which was interfering with Adobe's efforts to install, a problem somewhat reminiscent of years ago when installing FrameMaker with other pdf generators including Adobe's very own Acrobat.

So it is all working well now. FM is a great program and Adobe Support has been really excellent (when I found it), the best I've had from a large software company. Of course, we'd all like better diagnostics when things go wrong. Such is life.

[Bob_Niland]

Although not likely the problem in this instance, another thing to try is reboot, particularly if you rarely shut the machine down and/or have have been using the Windows Hibernate feature in lieu of Sleep or Shut Down.

I have seen some peculiar behavior* in various apps, but mostly FM2019 & FM2020, the longer I go between reboots. And the problem invariably cannot be duplicated after a clean reboot.

* (like silently omitting an entire component file when rendering a book)

[K.Daube]

another thing to try is reboot,

---

I always shut down the system in the evening... Hibernation creates strange effects not only in FM. Therefore reboot is IMHO a first measure in strange situations.