ArcGIS Explorer Desktop Build 2500 constant crashing in Windows 7 Professional 64 bit

[AlexHasen]

Howdy y'all,

I'm the unofficial IT monkey here at our office and it has been decided that we need to include geologic maps with all of our reports from now on. So of course, today I was thrown the CD's of GAT data and told to figure it out. My first step was to install Explorer Desktop (which only seems to want to install in 32 bit for some reason) and try to load the layers from the CD onto my machine. After two hours of waiting to transfer the data over, I finally booted up Explorer and was instantly hit with many things.

First: It changed the theme to Windows 7 Basic

Second: It decided to hide literally everything on the screen under the basemap even though it was opening in windowed mode

Third: It took about three minutes to get the annoying basemap to go away and only appear in the window

Fourth: When I finally got into the program, I went to add content and selected one of the layers. Lo and behold, the progress bar appears...and immediately crashes the program. Reverting everything back to normal Windows 7.

It has done this every single time I have opened the program, and is getting to the point of frustration for me. I am well versed in technology and Windows 7 and I still can't get it to work, which means my users (who are all civil engineers) will never in a million years manage to make it work.

Now then, this build (2500) has been out for some time as far as I can tell, and I'm hoping that someone has found a fix to the issue out there. If anybody could tell me what i'm doing wrong, or what is causing the issue and how to resolve it, I would be very much obliged. Also, if anyone could tell me how to get the damn thing to install in the 64 bit version, that would be nice as well.

Thanks,

Alex

[MarkBockenhauer]

Alex,

64 bit:
There isn't a 64 bit install version of ArcGIS Explorer Desktop.  The 32 bit install version should work fine.

Crash:
My first guess at the cause of crash would be graphics card driver.  Updating the graphics card driver may resolve the issue with crashing.  What graphics card do you have?

~ It decided to hide literally everything on the screen under the basemap~
This sounds like a graphics card issue, can you attach a screenshot of what it looks like?

Windows 7 basic:
When ArcGIS Explorer Desktop 900 was first released, using it and Windows Aero did not work for several graphics cards.  We used a Microsoft recommended approach and disabled aero while running ArcGIS Explorer to 'lighten the load' on the graphics card.  This is no longer an issue with newer graphics cards and it is possible to run ArcGIS Explorer desktop and use Aero. 

You can override this behavior using the settings file.

> %appdata%\esri\arcgis explorer\settings1500.xml

Just add the DisableAeroDWM attribute to the E3Settings element and set it to false. Try out Explorer and if it runs ok, you are set. If not, remove the setting and your back to Aero Basic.

<E3Settings DisableAeroDWM="false"

Using ArcGIS Explorer Desktop on Windows 8, aero is also not an issue, there is no display change when ArcGIS Explorer desktop starts.

Mark

[AlexHasen]

Mark,

Thanks for the quick response. I will wait on updating the graphics drivers until this evening when I have access to a quicker internet connection. My laptop has an Nvidia NVS 5200M graphics card in it, and it has worked with most programs that I run, that being said it has been a while since I updated the drivers on my laptop, so I'm going through and making the rounds for all of my hardware this evening.

I attached a screenshot of the splash screen that appears when the program opens and as you can notice, it covers the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. I am wondering what the cause of this might be, as the solution I have found to fixing it is to click on the taskbar and it resets the screen.

Thanks for your insight so far, this is really helping toward getting my users ready for this to be installed on their machines.

I will post an update after updating my drivers

Alex

[joelkadeenjoelkadeen]

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[Anonymous User]

Mark,
My laptop has an Nvidia NVS 5200M graphics card in it

I will post an update after updating my drivers

ESRI's canned response is to update video drivers, but most of the time that doesn't fix anything. I have a high-end laptop with NVIDIA 6300M, dedicated graphics, and Explorer doesn't run most of the time. I also have issues with it on my desktop with a high-end ATI graphics card. From my experience, if explorer doesn't run, it just won't run. I then turn to open source software for that machine.

[AmyBrassieur]

If you have integrated graphics on the nVidia laptop, add E3.exe to the program settings in the video card's 3D settings to use integrated graphics, not the nVidia magic.

Also, I have to roll back every machine to IE 9 since the IE 10 came out last spring. IE 10 seems to break ArcGIS Explorer, both build 1750 and build 2500.

I have about 20 people using ArcGIS Explorer Desktop, been using it since 2010.

Amy Brassieur
GIS Manager
Iberia Parish Government

[MaryEllen_Perko]

Hi.  I know it has been nearly a year since you reported this problem, but I am wondering if you ever found an answer.  We are experiencing the exact same thing (but with build 1500) since we started pushing IE10 out to our users last weekend.  All was fine in IE9 and Build 1500.  Then IE 10 was installed and it appears that every ArcGIS Explorer Desktop no longer works properly.

Thanks,
Mary Ellen

[AmyBrassieur]

Mary Ellen,

I haven't found any answer besides rolling iE back to 9 every time it updates. After I roll it back, I search for Windows updates, then go in and hide any IE updates. I have about 25 users who seem to get staggered IE updates so I don't have to do them all at once. I'd have to figure out something automated if I had more users.

[MaryEllen_Perko]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.  First, I thought I would let you know that we've been working with Esri on this and they have been able to reproduce the issue and have logged a bug report.  However, they haven't been able to identify the problem or offer a solution, yet.  BUT, yesterday I was testing an idea we had and maybe this will help.  In my test, if I uncheck the IE10 Internet Options->Connection->LAN Settings "Automatically detect settings" setting Build 1500 seems to work.  Additionally, esri tried it yesterday, too, and they said that didn't work for them but what did work was checking "Use a proxy server for your LAN" and "Bypass proxy server for local addresses."  Perhaps it is worth a try?  And I'm curious to learn if it does/doesn't work as further testing of the idea.

Btw, the idea came from the report that unchecking that setting in IE10 fixes an often reported problem with Build 2500.  The thought is that it could impact Build 1500, too.

Thanks,

Mary Ellen

[AmyBrassieur]

I have moved on to build 2500 and 2505.. I'm having good results by sticking with IE 9 and integrated graphics. All my processors (CPUs) are Intel. Explorer is picky about processors, crashes and won't run on Celeron on the machines I tried. I get squirrely results on AMD processors. Sometimes it's OK, sometimes not.

I made sure my IT guy only buys systems with Intel processors, but some of the entities that contribute to my department have computers with AMDs.

I did just uninstall build 2500 on my laptop and installed 2505. This caused my nVidia 3D settings to forget that E3.exe was set to integrated graphics. I had strange behavior from 2505 till I added E3.exe back to the exceptions list to use integrated graphics.