ArcPad Error on Exit - 10.02

[NathanRudd]

Every time I exit ArcPad 10.02, I get an ArcPad.exe window with the message "ArcPad has encountered a problem and needs to close." The program window has already closed by the time I this window appears.  There is a Debug option that doesn't appear to do anything.  Anyone else experience this? 

I'm running it on an Windows XP laptop, and never encountered this in 10.01.

Thanks.

Nathan

[TimHopper]

Nathan,

That behavior seems pretty strange.

Three questions for you:

1. If someone logs into the machine with a separate user profile does the crash occur?

2. If you open a blank map in ArcPad, save it and close, does ArcPad crash?

3. If you rename the My ArcPad folder within the My Documents folder, does ArcPad crash when you exit?  Rename "My ArcPad" to "My ArcPadOld", or something along those lines.

Windows 7
C:\Users\<UserProfile>\Documents\My ArcPad

Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\<UserProfile>\My Documents\My ArcPad

Depending on the results of those tests we may be able to make a better determination as to why the crash is occurring for you.

[NathanRudd]

Nathan,

That behavior seems pretty strange.

Three questions for you:

1. If someone logs into the machine with a separate user profile does the crash occur?

2. If you open a blank map in ArcPad, save it and close, does ArcPad crash?

3. If you rename the My ArcPad folder within the My Documents folder, does ArcPad crash when you exit?  Rename "My ArcPad" to "My ArcPadOld", or something along those lines.

1. Haven't tried this, as no one else uses my computer.
2. This doesn't cause a crash.
3. This doesn't appear to help.

I may have isolated the problem to certain shapefiles that are created from an Access database we use for managing weed data (and exporting data to shapefiles for editing and making maps). We call that the WIMS database, so I'll refer to those as WIMS shapefiles. It seems the only time I get ArcPad to crash on exit is if I have one or more of those shapefiles loaded.  I just tried loading shapefiles from other sources (i.e., created in ArcGIS) and ArcPad does not crash on exit when using those.  But it does crash when WIMS shapefiles are loaded, even when I load only copies of the WIMS shapefiles made with ArcToolbox.

[TimHopper]

Nice work narrowing that down.  Most of the time, ArcPad related crashes and issues are data specific.

For those problematic shapefiles, you can try a few things.

1. Import the shapefile into a geodatabase.  Does the feature class cause ArcPad to crash if you check out for ArcPad?
2. Export that feature class back out to a shapefile.  Does this new shapefile cause ArcPad to crash?
3. Run Check / Repair Geometry on your problematic shapefiles.

ArcToolbox > Data Management Tools > Features > Check Geometry / Repair Geometry

Sometimes the steps above will get you a shapefile which works properly.

Thanks.

[RolfBroch]

Could this be related?

http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/8043-ArcPad.exe-has-encountered-a-problem...?highlight=exit

Rolf

[NathanRudd]

It could well be related, since all of the 'WIMS' shapefiles also have custom ArcPad forms with APL and VBS files.

However, I have noticed other strange behavior in previous versions of ArcPad that I believe must be related to the shapefile definition (not the data forms).  For example: editing polygons created by GPS-streaming by deleting vertices somehow corrupts the file header and makes it impossible to import the data back into our Access database; opening empty shapefiles in ArcMap generates an error message: "Error opening feature class. Number of shapes does not match the number of table records."  However, I never encountered the error on exiting ArcPad in previous versions of ArcPad (I did not use v. 8). 

Maybe a future update will bring a solution.

Nathan