I was going through my webpage this evening to get it cleaned up and ready for official publishing when all of a sudden it locked up. I ended the program through Task Manager. Now, I no longer can open ANY files created by Site Spinner.

I have a back up on an external hard drive that I can use, but this is very frustrating. I have worked for a month on this project, thought that I had all the kinks worked out this evening, and now I can't even open my project.

Any idea as to what could be wrong and how I could fix it?

Sorry graciemae, I don't have a solution for you.

But, I have had similar occurences.

Not so much locking up, but I occasionaly get the "Program not responding" message.

In my situation, I can click "Close now" or, like yourself, use the Task Manager.

I do lose any changes, but I have no problem reopening the files.

This information is mainly for VM staff to investigate, and I am again sorry that I can't solve your issue.

Tery

Thanks Tery, I will forward this on to the staff.

Sorry again, this time for the typo.

It's Terry, not Tery

If you haven't already done so, I suggest a computer reboot -- in case something has gone wrong with Windows.

Can you open the tutorials project? (Help > Tutorials).

When the project does not open, what are the indications, such as error messages?

Yes, I did do a computer reboot but it did not fix the problem. I can open the Help screen. In fact, I was able to open the backup from the memory stick. I saved it to the folder on the hard drive where my other SS documents are. I can now open this new file, but still cannot open the old files.

Try reinstalling Site Spinner.

As you can now read some files, I don't think a SiteSpinner reinstall will help.

I can understand how one file might be trashed, but it is a surprise that you have several now that you can't open. Unless you tried to open the others when the the fault was present.

When a project does not open, what are the indications, such as error messages?

There is possibly not a lot of hope for your damaged project files -- this is a time to be glad you have backups.

Yes, I am very grateful I backed it up!

There are no error messages, just the continuous hour-glass.

How many project files does this happen on?

Your glitch may have caused an extra large page to be added to the project (or something like that). This can take a while for SS to sort out -- next time you take a coffee break, leave it hour-glassing for half-an-hour and see what happens.

Another thing worth trying is to temporarily rename or move your image directory (or directories). This removes the image processing load from SS, and things may then move more quickly.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try that. Now, it is not letting me open the backup file.

Ok, I did what you suggested with the coffee break and when I came back it was open. (Yay!)

Ok,now the question is, how did an extra large get attached to the project? How do I get it out?

This is so weird to me! In my mind, all I am doing is pretty basic stuff: text boxes, hyperlinks, images. This is all stuff I did with my old software without a hitch. Why am I having so much trouble with this now? I'm not in there messing around with stuff and accidently deleting files...just doing pretty basic, ho-hum things. It feels like every time I touch the project, something "breaks"...even if I'm not specifically working with that "something"!

I’m sorry you are having so many problems, but it sounds to me that it is a User Interface problem.

I have been using Virtual Mechanics products (quite regularly) since 2006, and have never experienced anything like what you are trying to explain.

My only guess is that you have an unwanted object on your page that is causing the problem.

To check this, use the right click close to the extreme right, and in turn, close to the extreme bottom of your page. Select “All right” and “All below” respectively. Delete the objects selected.

If that doesn’t work, the only other thing I can think of is that (which I have done occasionally), you may have left your computer, and left an object (such as a book) resting on your keyboard.

If an object was open at the time, it would add thousands of unnecessary characters into it.

Check your objects for that possibility. Spaces are hard to find, but if you use Shift/Ctl/End, that should select to the bottom.

If you can’t find a solution that way, try to determine the size of your objects.

I don’t know how to do this, but I have asked a similar question in this thread

Terry

Sounds good. I will try this.

I do want to mention that I am back now to another problem. It appears that when you go to my website, some hyperlinks are no longer working and images aren't appearing. However, when these things were loaded, they "transferred with no errors". The hyperlinks say they are there and they work in the preview. But they don't work on the published page.

When you talk about interface problems, does this mean the type of equipment I am using? Currently, I am using Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7. Does this make a difference? My computer is doing fine with all the other software it is running.

Is it possible that I have just received a lemon version of this software? When I chose Site Spinner, it was because of the reviews it received on Amazon (something like 57 five stars). However, when I look at the 1 and 2 star reviews, it seems those people maybe had some of the same troubles.

I am considering asking for a refund, but if it is possible that I just got a fluke maybe it would be good to see if they could let me have different software? Does that make a difference?

I used the term “User Interface” with tongue in cheek, suggesting it was a user problem, not a software problem. That may not be the case.

I have not heard of many problems that you speak of with the software, but maybe it could be worth your while to check for the latest version, then reinstall the program. Just in case the original did not install correctly.

Ah, the useris the problem...I see. LOL. Well, that very well may be the case.

Right now, I'm in the process of creating a smaller version of the website. It's not what I wanted, but will get the job done and that's what's important.

Still opening slowly even though it is now only about 7-8 pages, but at least opening! Redoing all the hyperlinks, but maybe this smaller version will be running by tonight...

Then I need to go write some cartoons!!!

Just wanted to post a little update to the situation, in case others are having the same problems.

After reviewing my site, Virtual Mechanics did confirm that a bug was found in the software. They stated that they are working on a patch for it, which hopefully will be available soon. In the meantime, I'm going to be using a small version of my website until the patch is available.

I'm so happy to find out what the problem is. Thanks so much to everyone who tried to help and to Virtual Mechanics Support for their fast emails!

I want to add a bit about this problem in case someone else sees the same symptoms:

When a project is loaded, geometry names are assigned and tested for uniqueness. The problem here was a case where there were a large number of geometries and where the assigned geometry names fell into a range that was already used. Normally, only a few numbers have to be checked before a unique one is found but here, because of an unusual set of circumstances, there were 7000 that each had to be checked against 7000 names. That was taking a while (2.5 minutes in our tests).

This scenario should be very rare but we will add a fix to prevent the slowdown if it does happen. The problem will corrected in versions 2.91a and up.

In the meantime, if anyone encounters very long load times, contact us at vmsupport. We can manually adjust the project to correct it.