Freemaster Opens Once, Will Not Run Again

[ee_dugan]

Freemaster Opens Once, Will Not Run Again.  We installed Freemaster 3.0 on one of our technicians laptop.  After installing, Freemaster opened and ran.  We closed it, then tried to reopen.  The rotating circle appears and then goes away without opening Freemaster.  The IT department re-imaged his computer and it ran for about 4 hours.  It will not open again.

We are able to run it when it is opened as Run as Other User with admin credentials.  Any thoughts on what the program needs to run?

We uninstalled and tried with Freemaster 2.5 with the same results.

[MichalH]

Hello Douglas, Stefan and other users facing a similar issue,

I would like to let you know that we work on resolving the issue. Stefan has kindly agreed to cooperate with us on testing and running debug-log-enabled builds of FreeMASTER. From the investigation so far, it seems the application reaches the point when it restores window position, toolbars layout and other information from system registry and then terminates. The root cause of the crash is not yet fully understood. Debugging continues.

Thank you for your patience. Feel free to contact NXP directly with any additional information related to this issue. 

Thank you,

Michal

[vickusboshoff]

Hi Michal.

Any feedback regarding this?

I cannot run Freemaster 3 at all. Also, cannot revert back to the older versions of Freemaster.

Some PCs seem fine though..

[MichalH · Accepted solution]

Dear Vickus,

I'm sorry for slow responses on this topic. I'm in contact with two users facing this issue. The root cause is not yet known, but renaming FreeMASTER registry entries has helped in one case. Does run-as-administrator also help in your case?

If you are able to run the regedit.exe, please rename the key

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Freescale\FreeMASTER

to a different name like FreeMASTER_bak  and try running the FreeMASTER again. 

After this (if it helps), the main window may start minimized or on background behind other windows. Also toolbars may be at wrong positions. You should be able to go to menu View / Application Layout and select Restore Factory Default to fix it.

Please confirm if this procedure helps. We continue to track the issue. Now suspecting corrupted access rights to the registry, but the primary reason is unclear.

Thank you,

Michal

[13226508]

This way  is useful,and  It Solved my problem.

Thanks

7/5000

Solved my problem

[vickusboshoff]

Hi Michal.

I tried run as administrator and ensured app is allowed through windows

firewall to no avail.

Logging in as a different user worked.

Then I deleted my windows user and added it again, this solved the problem.

Only got your mail now, so never tried the regedit.

Anyway, I've been using FreeMaster for almost two decades. It must be the

nicest tool available and the newest features are brilliant. Thanks, I hope

you get this bug soon.

Regards

Vickus (JL) Boshoff

082 557 4885

[MichalH]

Hello, the FreeMASTER version 3.0.3 has just been released. It should detect the registry corruption and fix is automatically while starting. This issue should not appear anymore.

Thanks,

Michal

[MichalH]

Dear Douglas,

I'm sorry for the issues. We are testing the desktop application under a user without administrative privileges so this should not be the root cause of the problem. Our test account is a member of Users group and the app works fine. Can you confirm your account is a member of "Users" or "Power Users" group? 

Questions:

• Do you use 32-bit or 64-bit system? Is it Windows 10?
• Do you have multiple monitors? If yes, can you try to run it with a single monitor only?
• Are you able to run Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) repeatedly?

Also, when the issue happens and FreeMASTER vanishes from the screen, can you please do the following:

• Run the Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc)
• Expand "More Details" at the bottom
• Select the "Details" tab
• Sort alphabetically and check if the FreeMASTER processes still run - pcmaster.exe and pcmcef.exe in the list.
• If yes, right-click the pcmaster.exe and select "End task"
• Try to run FreeMASTER again.

Thank you for your help,

Michal

[stbm]

Hello Michal,

since 20th March i have a similar problem. Until then FreeMaster 3.0.2.6 ran without problems. When i now click onto pcmaster.exe a rotating circle appears and goes away after few seconds. Nothing happens any more. There´s no process in Task manager. 

Here´s something I already tried without success:

- Installation of previous versions

- Change of installation path to location where i have writing rights

- Starting without additional monitors

- pcmaster started with compatibilty mode (Win7)

Only when i start the programm with admin privilegues it runs properly. 

I have a notebook with following attributes:

- Win 10 Enterprise Version 10.0.18363

- 64 bit

- member of users group

- Java 8 update 201

I hope you can help me soon.

Thank you for your help,

Stefan

[MichalH]

Dear Stefan,

the fact that even older versions do not work mean that the issue is not related to the larger changes made in 3.0 including the new Chromium engine. This is "good" message. I suspect it might be related to some system restrictions on using the Internet Explorer component. Can you please try to run Internet Explorer (or iexplore.exe) and navigate to any local file (this can be a text file or any saved HTML file)?

Also, is it possible for you to try running the FreeMASTER with the antivirus protection disabled temporarily? 

If this does not work - and if you are willing to do some more experiments, please contact me directly. I'm going to prepare a test version with some extended diagnostic logging. 

Thank you very much for your cooperation,

Michal