Mathcad License Server
Tillie
I have been plagued with a problem with Mathcad 15.0 (M030 [MC15_M030_20131216]) in which randomly I receive an error that says "Server busy.." When I click on "Switch to" it opens start menu. If I click on "Retry" it gives the same error.
It usually means that a process wants to connect (e.g. to update its database) and can't within a given time and times out. So either the connection is not yet ready or another process is working so heavily in the background that no other process gets a chance to get a connection in a reasonable time. When did the problem show up the first time and what did you install before? If you press Ctrl-Alt-Del, how many runnng processes are showing up?
I encounter the similar problem on two machines, usually while surfing with a lot of tabs open. One time disabling auto Windown updates cured the problem, on the other machine a freshly installed utility seemed to cause the problem, working quite heavily in the background. Since deinstllation no problems of the kind.
This error had been ongoing and it typically used to happen with Excel, as in, when I used to click on Switch to, it would take me to one of the cells in Excel sheet that is open. All I had to do is press Esc so it the cursor in the cell disappers, and then Mathcad error used to stop. But now, it points me to Start menu and there is no way to know what process is hindering.
So it is difficult to predict when it occured first. And I have multiple applications open (Word, Excel, Outlook, CFD packages, Inventor, Chrome etc) typically when I work. Do you think a reinstall may solve this problem? The worst part is I can't do anytrhing when this error is thrown because I can't even save the work I had done until that point!
I still don't understand why you think its a Mathcad issue and why you think that a reinstallation of Mathcad would cure the problem (though that always is an option). It seems like some other process is taking up too much system ressources and so any the current open programs may show that non-reaction.
It seems to be a good idea to set autosave to a rather small value like 1 or 2 minutes. This feature has already saved me a lot of retyping as Mathad15 has a very bad habit on my system: when I have a regions which takes "endless" to compute (typically some symbolic evaluations) and I cancel the calculation with ESC, I can continue to edit the file. But when it comes to saving, Mathcad would create a 0byte temp file and then dies. I have to kill the process via task manager. I can't remember having that error with older versions but I can't remember which service release was the first where I encountered this nasty effect. A short time at autosave has save me many times in those situations.
It is fairly random, or at least, I haven't established a causality with any other applications. My workstation has Intel i7 3770 (3.4GHz) processor, 32 GB RAM and Windows 7 64 bit Proofessional OS. Although I must mention that this has started happening more frequently since I upgraded to M030 from M020. Don't know if that is the cause anyway.
As I was sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting for an Excel VBA procedure to stop running, I thought I'd have a quick play with a Mathcad 15 worksheet ... and kept getting the "Server Busy" error until VBA finally finished (I reckon VBA had to take its socks off to get beyond 10).
Whilst it may occur with other applications, I can't actually remember it ever happening with anything other than Mathcad. It's been a constant across many versions of Mathcad and OSs (XP, Vista, 7) and the processor type / speed and amount of RAM seems to make no difference.
The fact that I've very rarely, if ever, seen it happen with anything other than Mathcad strongly suggests that Mathcad does (or does not) do something that these other apps don't (or do). Under threat of torture, I might be convinced to mention my suspicion that the "busy server" is one of the MS Office apps (Excel in this and many other cases).
I am installing Mathcad 14 from my installation DVD on a new PC. All went well except towards the end a window says, "The wizard is now contacting the PTC licensing server to obtain your license automatically. This may take a few moments." Then another window pops up saying, "The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden." What do I do now?
The solution was on the PTC Community page - how to transfer a Mathcad license to a new computer. All I had to do was fill out a form and the new license file was automatically emailed to me in a few minutes. I ran the licensing wizard, pointed it to the saved license file, and I'm happily up and running! The solution is here:
It is a MathCAD Application Server that would allow you to create a document and then essentially can be re-used by people who have no experience at all with MathCAD. After a bit of digging I found that the company was bought by PTC and the software is now integrated into WindChill Products.
I don't think this needs further clarification... but as you know we don't support the Mathcad Application Server (a.k.a. Mathcad Calculation Server) any more. We are considering a revival of a calculation server at some point int he future, based upon the Mathcad Prime platform. However, this is not imminent.
We are continuing, in the meantime, to capture requirements and typical use cases for such a solution, to help us assess its marketability. While I understand what you accomplish with your CalcServer, Valery, perhaps others can chime in with some of the most critical problems that would ideally be solved using a reincarnation of this product offering.
p.s. I forgot to add that the Calculation Server was not integrated into Windchill as was originally surmised. We have integrated Mathcad with Windchill form a structured data-management perspective, allowing Mathcad worksheets and their dependent datasets to be life-cycle managed. However, Windchill itself is not a live calculation environment wherein Mathcad worksheets can calculate - at least not today. As such, without this (and without a Calculation Server replacement) Mathcad worksheets still need to be used client-side, on the machine which has the Mathcad application on it, to be live. Hope that helps.
I was also thinking that when we are in the field so we can do some prelimarny calculations on clients machines or our field laptops. This would be easier then putting MathCAD on these machines as they are pretty under powered or locked down. Also it seemed like we could access all of our calculations on any web enabled device so our phones would become more powerful.
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