1200 and Beyond Problems

[TechSupport]

All users have Dell computers with plenty of memory, Win XP Pro, and SP3. I don't have much experience with the inner workings of Explorer.

I have installed Build 1200 on 4 computers in our Planning Department. Three had Explorer only and no other ESRI products installed. Those installs went OK and previously used .nmf files work fine.

One user had Desktop installed but never used it. I removed it. This person (who wasn't present during the install) then reported that new .nmf files from the consultant delivered a few days ago started to crash her previous Explorer with a resulting report request screen. Installing Build 1200 would hang at the install complete screen and never change. After uninstalling the old version through Win Add/Remove programs, Build 1200 installed without incident.

Now however, even loading the basemap crashes Explorer after a few keystrokes within the program. The new .nmf files load for a minute or two but continue to consistently crash Explorer.

Perhaps there are settings left over from the Desktop uninstall, either in the registry, the c:\program files\explorer directory, or maybe in the user's application data folder.

I have attached a .dmp file. I had to rename the extension to .doc in order to upload it.

Please advise.

[dcopple]

I am experiencing problems with my maching that has desktop install as well.  1200 originally crashed Desktop, I repaired Desktop and that crashes 1200.  1200 no longer startsup, can't get any reply from ESRI on this issue.  I think there are some major bugs with 1200.

[TechSupport]

The confusing part of this is the odd behavior of the new build when using the shortcut created by the install. You can still crash the program as detailed below but a specific procedure enables the previously broken users to work with their internal files without crashing.

Updated the Dell graphics driver and gave full rights to the c:\program files\explorer directory to the users group.

When inside Explorer after loading basemap(0), under the Basemap icon you can "Clear basemap" and "Manage my basemaps...". If you browse to MyDefaultMap.nmf in the user's My Documents\ArcGis folder and choose it, the program crashes. Perhaps expected behavior programatically but confusing nonetheless when troubleshooting. Some error checking here would be nice. 

When loading Explorer, basemap(0) now loads without crashing but any attempt to load basemaps in c:\program files\explorer\basemaps immediately crashes the program. Oddly enough, if you double click the .nmf's in that directory first, a dialog box with several XML errors comes up but allows you to load Explorer but only after clicking continue in the error dialog box. The latest MSXML files are on our machines.

After loading basemap(0), the user then loaded the previously known working custom maps and made one of those the default map. After that, the user could add the Bing street basemap from the c:\program files\explorer\basemaps directory and add it to their maps.

These problems had nothing to do with any files delivered by the consultant. They all work after solving the crash issue.