FrameMaker 9 crashing on Windows 7

Report · Jun 02, 2010

Hey Framers

I have problems with my FrameMaker 9 installation. I set up a new Windows 7 (64 bit) machine with sufficient system resources - 8 GB of RAM, for example. A couple of days ago, I installed FrameMaker 9 patch 250 (standalone installation) on this machine. Yesterday I noticed for the first time that FrameMaker has the problems below:

When switching back to an open FrameMaker document after working with another program, for example, FrameMaker frequently has display problems. In this situation, I try to refresh the display, but this does not have any effect. When scrolling the document, white pages are displayed. Some time after that, FrameMaker does no longer react. I need to kill the FrameMaker process since closing the application normally is no longer possible.
Starting FrameMaker is extremely slow.

I really do not know what's going on. Would be so nice if anybody could help me with the problems above.

Cheers,

Nicole

Report · Jun 02, 2010

Nicole, I'm not on Win7 yet, but I'd suggest the same troubleshooting steps as on XP, which would be to

check your video card drivers to be sure you've got the latest available. FM has always been notoriously sensitive to video card issues, which would tie in with the white page display you mention.
Check the Win7 equivalent to your system and event logs to see if anything is recorded that might coincide with the crash.
Do you have other applications open at the same time as you're running FM?

About FM being extremely slow to load, can you identify what stage is taking the bulk of the time, by watching the bottom of the splash screen -- on XP there's a "ticker" line where it says loading fonts and localization and filters -- can you tell what is taking the longest time?

Also, what printer do you have set as your system default printer when FM loads? Did you install the Distiller printer that came with the FM installation or do you have a separate Acrobat Pro license?

Sheila

Report · Jun 04, 2010

Hey Sheila

First, thanks for your answer.

My video controller driver is up to date.
In the event log of my operating system, besides the message that FrameMaker stopped working no other message coinciding with the event is output.
When working with FrameMaker, Office applications (Word, OneNote, Outlook ), Internet Explorer and VMware Workstation are running in parallel. The latter is required to run a virtual machine with a server application.

Today, starting FrameMaker has been fine. Startup time was normal, I think.

My default printer is a HP printer on our network.

We have a separate Acrobat Pro license, version 9.3.2 is currently installed on my system.

I still have problems with FrameMaker crashing.

Cheers,

Nicole

Report · Jun 04, 2010

Nicole,

Not sure that this will fix the crashing, but you should always use Adobe PDF as the default printer in FrameMaker. In my work, I set Adobe PDF as the default printer, and select another printer when using OTHER applications, on a case by case basis.

In FrameMaker, I ALWAYS print to Adobe PDF, even if I want to print to a physical printer, which creates a PDF; then I print the PDF to the physical printer. It is a slight annoyance but keeps FrameMaker happy.

There is a free app that will switch the printer to Adobe PDF when you enter FrameMaker, which means you do not have to set it as your default printer. I do not use it, so I do not know where to get it. I am sure someone else will chime in with the answer.

Van

Report · Jun 04, 2010

The utility Van mentioned is the most excellent freebie "SetPrint" from http://www.sundorne.com

Report · Jun 04, 2010

Expanding on what Van mentioned about the default printer, it's definitely a "best practice" to have the Acrobat printer instance (in XP it's named "Adobe PDF", I don't know whether the name has changed on Win7) as the default printer when using FM, particularly if you're going to be outputting PDFs. That way the PDFs are created with the optimal distilling process and a big, big plus is that there's no risk of ending up with printer-resident fonts in your FM files which can cause PDF creation problems if they can't be embedded in the distill process.

Second advantage, though, which could easily be a culprit for the crashing, is that FM is usually more stable when working with a local system printer as opposed to a network printer.

Third advantage is that HP's use "clonescript", they're not true-blue Adobe Postscript devices. This is definitely less of a problem today than it was several years ago, but in general if you're producing PDFs that need to be as robust as possible then having a straight-to-Adobe PDF printer process is the best.

Are you working with files on the network or do you copy them to your local system? We've had many forum users find that crashing problems are resolved when they work locally. Network issues and network backup software "interference" are the ususal suspects.

And, last but not least, have you found any error messages in FM's console file after the crashes? I'm not sure where the files are in Win7 ... hopefully somebody else will be able to jump in with that info.

Report · Jun 07, 2010

Hey

Thanks for the answers.

I set "Adobe PDF" as default printer for my system. But still, at some points, FrameMaker crashes.

The files I work with are located on the network. But I haven't experienced this kind of problem before.

On Windows Vista and Windows 7, FrameMaker log files are located in AppData/Roaming in the user profile.

In the latest log file the internal error 9004, 6921852, 9677150, 0 is output. Since I experienced FrameMaker crashes not with printing or any other specific operation but just when switching to FrameMaker from another application again, I do not know whether the info on this error in the forum does help with my problem.

Cheers,

Nicole

Report · Jun 07, 2010

You're correct, the log file content isn't readable by us mere forum mortals, only by internal Adobe engineers, so thank you for not posting it.

The file I mentioned is FM's "console.txt" file, it often contains error messages that can be helpful in determining the cause of crashes if the crash is related to some problem content or a filter having difficulty with importing content.

How exactly are you switching from the other apps back to FM? using keyboard shortcuts or mouse actions or ...? Are you using any third party "desktop utilities" that are used to switch between apps or to "manage the desktop" or whatever?

Sheila

Report · Jun 07, 2010

I am experiencing what sounds like the same problem. In answer to Sheila's question, I usually switch back to Frame using the standard Win7 taskbar buttons.

Another symptom of this crash, for me, is that the taskbar itself gets corrupted--some of the buttons are drawn on top of one another, offset by half a button width.

I'm wondering if this has something to do with Frame's interaction with the taskbar. I haven't seen this behavior when Frame isn't running, and Frame is the only application that appears to freeze. The taskbar corruption persists even after killing Frame, so I usually end up restarting to fix the taskbar.

Cheers,

-Arthur

Report · Jun 07, 2010

Arthur, are you running 64-bit also?

Report · Jun 07, 2010

Sorry, I meant to mention that. No, I'm using the 32-bit version.

-Arthur

Report · Jun 07, 2010

Hey

When I experienced the problem, I was also switching to FrameMaker via the taskbar button. However, with me, only FrameMaker froze, I could still access all the other applications via the taskbar.

Yesterday, for whatever reason, I didn't have any problems.

Cheers,

Nicole

Report · Jun 08, 2010

For both Nicole and Arthur: do you both typically have multiple FM documents open at the same time?

Report · Jun 08, 2010

Yes, I typically have a number of documents open. Sometimes a large number.

Also, I am using the new nested books feature.

Nicole, I may not have said that very clearly--no other applications freeze up on me, just FrameMaker.

I do frequently get some display corruption in the taskbar when Frame freezes. This doesn't seem to have any detrimental effect on the other applications, and may be purely cosmetic. To be on the safe side (and 'cause it bugs me), I restart the system to clean up the taskbar.

Thanks,

-Arthur

Report · Jun 08, 2010

This also applies to me. I typically have many FrameMaker documents open. I do not use the nested books feature.

Cheers,

Nicole

Report · Jun 09, 2010

I am also experiencing a similar problem. I am running Framemaker 9 on a Windows 7 x64 Ultimate machine.

Whenever I try to import a .docx document, the program crashes.

Report · Jun 11, 2010

darkjester, have you tried saving your .docx documents as the older Office 2003 .doc format first and then try the import into FM? FM's filters for Word can be "tempermental" at the best of times, so there's a better chance of success with an older format. For example, see this recent forum posting:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/656514?tstart=0

Another troubleshooting step would be to save your Word files as smaller units of pages and test the import again, to see if you can identify any specific feature that might be causing import problems, e.g. a particular graphic or table or something.

If you continue to have problems please post a new thread on the forum, so that this this thread can continue to explore FM freezes / crashes that (so far) don't have identifiable cause(s).

Sheila

Report · Jun 09, 2010

I have been using Framemaker as my only document software since Framemaker 2 on Unix.

Adobe is apparently determined to make this into a legacy product that us oldtimers can reminisce about. Not at all new age. It completely freezes in Windows 7 64 bit, even when I demoted it to XP sp 2 compatibility. I did try all the suggestions on this forum to no avail. Next try will be XP mode. I hope I can get the old jitney to fire up there.

Maybe Steve Jobs is right.

---Ken

Report · Jun 11, 2010

When I first started using FM9 I had a problem of it crashing similiar to your situation. I'm using Windows XP and a plugin to produce iSpec2200 compliant documents. To make a long story short the fix was reloading both FM9 and the plugin. It was a pain, but haven't had a problem since (been 7 months or so). Didn't see anyone mention a reload....anyway hope it's not a Windows 7 compatibility issue.

Eric G.

Report · Jun 28, 2010

G'day Folks,

No help I'm afraid. Just letting you know that I'm having similar problems -- slow interface and major display issues that only Task Manager > End Task can fix.

I'm using FrameMaker 9.0p250 on WIndows 7 Home Premium.

Food for thought:

• I've found that disabling the Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe; used for Aero) improves the GUI stability "somewhat", and that the GUI is significantly faster when the Paragraph Designer is closed! (And having the Char Designer or Table Designer open is OK, but not both!!!)

• I can reliably bring on the problem by Alt-tabbing to the Console window. When I do this, GUI hell breaks loose.

• I can only save workspaces when XP2 compatibility is enabled. Hmmmm.

• I've tried Frame 9 with the basic Windows 7 theme, with all Aero functionality disabled, and with minimal Advanced Performance Options (no Visual Effects; it looks like an NT machine) -- no improvement.

• I've found that 3rd-party Frame plugins, structured or unstructured interface, altering Interface Preferences, and general PC utilities (antivirus, reminder, etc) have no effect on the problem.

• My PC is quite new, with 4GB RAM and plenty of free hard disk space.

• Yes, video drivers are up-to-date and Adobe PDF is the default (via Sundorne SetPrint).

• I do still have Frame 7 installed on the computer as well. I wonder . . .

Any ideas very gratefully received.

Cheers,

Mark Lehmann

Report · Jul 07, 2010

I'm evaluating FrameMaker 9 for my company, but unfortunately I'm having the same issues as Mark. I'm excited about the new features, but the stability issues are so bad that we won't be upgrading.

I'm using version 9.0.4 on Windows 7 Professional.

Report · Jul 19, 2010

Most all of the new features don't work right, and many of them remove functionality that used to be there. A few of them give you some added functionality, but the balance is a lot of bugs, a lot less of the features that previously helped productivity, and only a few new features that actually work. The patches so far have not addressed any interface bugs, other than the F8 and F9 functionality, but even that isn't all the way fixed. I've created a very long list of bugs as I find them, but after a while I started to feel like the Adobe QA person and since FM9 was seriously impeding my productivity, I simply went back to Frame 7. Adobe warned me that I wouldn't have their support if I did this, but I never once needed their support when on Frame 7 because it worked.

Report · Jul 19, 2010

I appear to be in the minority here in that I like the new interface and haven't experienced more widespread problems, just the crashes (which seem to have grown less frequent--not sure if that's because of Frame updates, Windows 7 updates, or my current usage patterns).

I should say that I tend to leave everything docked, and mostly minimized, so I have never had the paragraph designer and table designer open at the same time. I love being able to set up my workspace and not continually shuffle around a bunch of floating dialogs.

I'm curious as to what functionality has been removed. I can't think of any that I'm missing. However, I'm a solo writer at a small startup, and I bought FM 9 when I initiated the documentation effort here, so I don't have 8 or 7 handy to compare it to (nor is rolling back an option). My laptop here is also significantly faster than my previous laptop, and came with windows 7, rather than the XP I ran at my previous job, so I really can't make an apples to apples comparison. Although I like the interface, there aren't any killer new features since 7. Then again, having used Frame since version 3, the only new feature I can remember with clarity is the addition of multiple undo in 7.2.

OK, I correct myself: I found the lack of the free version of WebWorks really annoying. Rather than encourage Adobe by spending $800 or whatever on a RoboHelp license to do what I used to be able to do for free, I bought the quirky but quite functional MIf2Go.

I wonder how many of the people experiencing problems are working with unstructured versus structured mode? Seems like many of the fixes in the patches are related to structured mode. I am working in unstructured Frame, myself.

-Arthur

Report · Jul 19, 2010

Hey Mark,

I'm looking for someone to tell me whether Frame 7 will work on Windows 7, and it sounds like you're thinking about trying this. If so, I'd be greatly interested to hear about your experience. My company is about to migrate to Windows 7, and I'm really hoping this won't force me to use the buggy, broken FM9. I used FM9 for long enough to see just how broken it is. I switched back to FM7 and have never looked back, but I'm concerned about what the future holds, since Adobe has offshored FrameMaker development and so far the FM9 patches have about the same effect as throwing a teaspoon of water on a raging forest fire.

Thanks!

Lori

Report · Jul 19, 2010

I can confirm that Frame 8 works fine on Windows 7 but I haven't tried Frame 7.