Filemaker 7 Crashing Continuously

[amh]

Some background for thosoe who would like to know:

In the beginning of September, we switched from Filemaker 5 to 7. The database was too erraticly written for it to properly convert, so it was my job to write a whole new system in 7.

I hit a stopping point when the email plugin (pop-it by cnsplug-ins) would lock up. They made a new version, and it fixed that problem.

Technical Situation Info:

4 Computers running fm7.0v3

Serving computer is running win2k server, rest are running win2k pro, however, we are not running fmserver.

What is happening: (I have been keeping a log, and all errors are the exception, not the rule)

When trying to print, periodically, program crashes with "illegal floating point operation" (which disassembles into "support.dll")

When trying to change to "layout" mode, periodically, it crashes with "memory could not be 'read'" which disassembles into "fmlayout.dll"

While performing a find, "memory could not be 'written'" - fmpro.exe (ntdll.dll) Access Violation

I sit at the serving computer and it also crashes, not just the clients, but no other computer crashing interrupts operation (obviously if the server crashes, everybody get booted).

The annoying part of it, is when you try to bring the program back up, it gives us the 'license' error, and must be rebooted to fix.

Has anyone else come across such erratic behavior before?

Any suggestions as to what to do?

Thank you for any help

[stanley]

amh4.com:

Welcome to the Forums.

It sounds like you've got a corrupted file, which would be very, very bad. You say you're not using FM Server; are you running FileMaker Pro on your server, and having users access the file(s) via "Open Remote..."?

I can't say what's going on with the specific errors - that's up to a Windows guy to answer - but FileMaker shouldn't be throwing these errors. This leads me to believe that your db file(s) are corrupt. To test, you should take a very simple file (or something pre-built, like a template) and run it on your system to see if you get the same errors.

The key to all of this is how you are hosting the files.

-Stanley

[David Kachel]

I agree with Stanley.

It sounds very much like a corrupted file.

I'd had no corrupted files with FMP 7 until last Friday. It was a humdinger and a project I had only put a couple of hours into!

Revert to a backup you are sure is not corrupt, or start over with a fresh file.

Corruption apparently happens far less often with v7 than with previous versions, but when it does happen, it's a beaut!

[amh]

If the case is that we have a corrupted file... would it not crash in a more consistent manner? I understand that is a bad question, no real answer.

I think that I have just reached a limit of complication in the actual design of the program itself.

I hear it is supposed to support up to like 4 terabytes with 36000 tables, blah blah blah. We're only sitting on 20MB with 26 tables, but over 250 relationships (lots of transversing and different ways of tracking the same items in complicated ways).

I appreciate your inputs,

is there any way to run a consistency check on the db file?