Framemaker 12 keeps crashing when attempting to update book

Report · Feb 27, 2017

Can anybody help? This has been happening for the past two days whenever I try to update a book. It seemed to crash when encountering a cross-reference, which I deleted, but it still thinks it is there and continues to crash. I sent the log file to fmerror@adobe.com, and I also found something in this forum that sounded similar, but there were no specific instructions on how to fix it -- something to do with structured versus unstructured? I am on Windows 7 Pro. Thanks!

Report · Feb 27, 2017

What happens if you open all the files in the book prior to updating the book? (Shift + Open all Files in Book with cursor in the book window)

Report · Feb 27, 2017

Funny you should mention that, because another thing that was causing this same crash (last night) was selecting all the files in the book, and going to View-->Show/Hide Conditional Text.

FYI, just tried what you suggested, and it crashed again.

Report · Feb 27, 2017

Do you have any other ideas? I need help, can somebody on this Forum or at Adobe please help me? Framemaker has no phone support.

Report · Feb 27, 2017

No. I've been watching the thread, hoping someone else would step in to help you. My strength is in explaining how the feature set works, and not so great with crashes, hardware conflicts and the like. But since I'm still the only one here, and it sounds like you are dead-in-the-water, I'll throw out a few things that I would try if it were my file. Please back-up your book/docs before starting:

Do you have a back-up of the book somewhere? What happens if you rename it and use it? (For future reference, incremental back-ups are a good idea for exactly this situation.)
What about pulling all the chapters from the book (which doesn't delete them off the drive, just out of the book window), and then add them back in one at a time, updating the book after each addition to narrow down the chapter that is causing the crash?
Once you find the chapter, you could run it through a MIF wash to see if it straightens up (see Internal Error: 11024, 21101821, 21093447, 19354980 for detailed instructions) and then put it back in a try again.
You could also make a brand new book file, and put all the chapters back in to see what that does. If that works, then you can re-set the book level commands, and add the generated files back in as well—let me know if you need help with that.

Fingers are crossed for you, and I'll continue to monitor the thread and will chime in if I can add anything helpful.

Report · Feb 27, 2017

not sure how to respond to both you and ArnisGubins, but thank you both for responding.

I as able to fix the smaller of my two books by creating a new book file and importing the chapters into it. It didn't crash with Update Book.

My other book has close to 100 chapters, so that will take a little longer, but I will post my results here.

Report · Feb 27, 2017

Funny to see the same answers from both of us.

I saw this on another forum this morning:

Answers round here are like buses. You wait a while then several come at once!

Pretty much. Glad we could give you a push in the right direction—and looking forward to hearing that the bigger book is back on track too.

Report · Feb 27, 2017

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that I created a new directory, copied all of the files and images from my big book into it and I was able to create a PDF and select all files View-->Conditional Text with no crash.

The bad news is that I then copied the working files back into my original directory (which is under Source Code Control, so they need to continue living there), and tried it again, and I got the same damn crash with the same damn internal error message.

So. . . now what?

Report · Feb 27, 2017

Is the original directory/folder with the files on a network server? If so, network latency may be messing with FM.

Pull the files, work with them locally and then push them back when done. This procedure can be automated with a command file.

Report · Feb 28, 2017

Well, yes and no. The original folder is ALSO on my hard drive, and I wasn't connected to the network when the crash happened (either time). I guess I can change the mapping location on the server to a different location, but now I have 100-plus files that I have to clean up, and besides the amount of time I have already spent, I have no answer how this problem occurred or how to prevent it from happening again.

Report · Feb 27, 2017

There is contact information for Adobe Tech Support on the FM Forum's main landing page.

Have you tried doing a MIF-wash of the files to remove any possible corruption? You can use the Book Mif-wash utility supplied in the Sample Scripts & Utilities folder; also read through this thread and links for some background info: How to get Wash Via Mif to work in FM11 .

Another problem might be the book file itself somehow being corrupted. You could try creating a new book file and adding the files to that.

You could also try to open the book component files individually to see if there's a particular one that is a troublemaker. Then give that a MIF-wash to see if it clears up the issue.

Report · Feb 27, 2017

not sure how to respond to both you and BarbBinder, but thank you both for responding.

I as able to fix the smaller of my two books by creating a new book file and importing the chapters into it. It didn't crash with Update Book.

My other book has close to 100 chapters, so that will take a little longer, but I will post my results here.

Report · Feb 28, 2017

Good morning, TechWriterKat2.

It seems like you have isolated the issue that is causing the crash/internal error, and have discovered the workaround. I'm all about doing whatever it takes to get my job out the door—ideally without curse words or tears. If moving the project folder over to a local drive to update it works, and moving it back meets the SCC requirements, then that's what I'd do until you can resolve the issues on the original drive.