Railmaster crashing Windows 10

[DaveU]

I am finding that Railmaster is crashing more often with the 'not responding, Windows will close the programme' message. I have followed all the advice re ini files, firewalls, fixed ip address etc... any ideas? Because it is intermitent it is difficult to work out why. I have recently added Pro and it seems a little worse. Crashing happens sometimes as I close the programme, sometimes whilst running it. I am running Windows 10 on a desktop 64bit.

Any suggestions?

[Britannia Builder]

I'm also running RM on Windows 10. Very occasionally - perhaps 2 or 3 times over the past few months - RM has hung when closing down, after displaying the 'updating important files' message. However, I don't get any 'not responding' message from Windows and I have to kill the program in task manager. It doesn't seem to do any damage to the files - it starts quite happily the next time. It hasn't been frequent enough to bother me.

 

Regards, John

[RB51]

Hi Dave - have you tried an overwrite of the software, using the link at the top of the Railmaster sub forum? R-

[Chrissaf]

Crashing happens sometimes as I close the program.

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I have seen this behaviour. I found an easy solution. With RailMaster NOT running. I searched for and deleted every file in the "railmaster" program folder that has a .BAK extension. Only the .BAK files though (there are quite a few of them, so search thoroughly), nothing else. The next time you close down RM after a restart, clean .BAK files are generated to replace the deleted ones. I found that this fixed the RailMaster crashing (not responding) on exit. So far, I have not experienced any 'not responding' crashes during normal RM operation. I have Windows 10 too.

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TIP, if you cannot see the file extensions (.BAK) in Windows Explorer.

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• Open 'Control Panel' and then open 'Folder Options'.
• Click the 'View' tab.
• Uncheck 'Hide extensions for known file types'.
• Click Window 'OK' button and exit 'Control Panel'.

The file extensions (including .BAK) will now be displayed in Windows Explorer.

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Since you have recently upgraded to ProPack and ProPack has an inbuilt backup feature that uses .BAK files. There may be a link between the issue you are experiencing, the RailMaster close down create .BAK files routine and the ProPack backup feature. Deleting the .BAK files and creating fresh new ones may possibly sort out all your crashing issues.

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Lets us know if it does.......or not as the case may be.

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John (BB), the above tip (delete .BAK files) will most likely sort out your occasional crashing on exit too.

[Britannia Builder]

That's very interesting, Chris. It suggests that the problem arises when some action has been taken that causes a particular file to be backed up and updated (or it could be an intermittent problem occuring at random on any backup). There are a lot of .bak files for standard track plans that I've never updated, but the 4 .bak files that do get updated are rm.bak, resource.bak, language.bak, and [my track plan].bak. The first 3 of these seem to be updated after every session (I've just been into RM and straight out again and they have this date and time of last update showing) but my track plan .bak was last updated a month ago, presumably when I last changed the plan. Maybe changing the track plan is implicated? I'm not sure what rm.bak is - it was only created 6 weeks ago on my system, while the others have been there all along.

 

Rather than immediately deleting the .bak files, I'll try to spot what I've done during the session next time the problem occurs.

 

Regards, John

[Chrissaf]

John, it is usually very safe to delete .BAK files with any program that creates them. They are auto created the next time the program that creates them runs.

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If you want to be cautious about deleting them, then just move them to a temporary folder. That way, in the very unlikely event of a problem arising, you can move them back again.

[Yelrow]

Chriss. Had there been no internet connection at all, presume none of this would have occured. john

[Chrissaf]

Internet or not, makes no difference. .BAK files are still created and have the potential to be corrupted whether there is an Internet connection of not.

[Yelrow]

How sneaky. john

[DaveU]

Thanks everyone.

Have - removed the .bak files, reinstalled railmaster as suggested, plus trying in Win7 compatibility mode. So far so good! If successful, will try then removing the compatibility if stable for few days.

[RB51]

Good to hear that Dave - thanks for feeding back as to where you are currently. Fingers crossed for the rest of it. Let us know when you can. R-

[96RAF]

I have just installed a fivers worth of RM on a Win 10 i7 laptop at latest update as of today in UK, mainly as a fall-back development tool for my main Pro setup in Cyprus. So far - installation from forum download OK, activation using key code from the DVD box OK, application running OK, close down OK.

So far so good.

[Fishmanoz]

So far so good.  That's what the guy who fell off the roof of a 10 storey building said as he was passing the 3rd floor.

 

PS.  No john, it's a joke, not a comment on using W10.

[Augustus Caesar]

There could be several reasons for the errors you are getting and not just corrupt .bak files.

Permissions to the folder may be incorrect but not wholly likely... however, one should consider the possibility.

There may be an inherent fault in Windows itself... again not HIGHLY likely but possible.

Another consideration is bad sectors on the hard drive at the location of the files to be overwritten. If data is on that part of the drive and there are bad sectors then nothing will write to the drive at that location. Removing the files clears the header data of those files at that location but the data is still there and can be safely overwritten (at least the sectors surrounding the bad ones) and will be by RM as it will not pick up the header information of the file to be overwritten. However, the bad sectors are usually marked by Windows and are not available to the user to save data to until the sectors are fixed... if you can follow all that. Once header information is removed then the data is classed as unwanted by your system and marked as such but is still there for recovery if you delete by accident.

 

Now, I'm not saying this is the fault you have but you really have to know what faults MAY be at play so at least you can be aware of the fact that if one thing does not work then you can look at another reason.

 

The fault is almost certainly NOT with RM unless the installation itself is ropey. Windows 10 will not be at fault either under normal circumstances and the areas I mention above will not be borne normally from any of the prior few points I make above.

 

Sometimes a solution is not as easy as it seems when questions are asked because not everyone looks at the same possible causes and occasionally not all information is forthcoming so we just 'best guess' or give the most likely answer when given certain information. Just as well this forum is full of some highly knowledgeable members.

 

This post is just notched up to act as an aid and not to reflect on help offered previously. :-)