START UP ERROR

[cnckid]

I have a 1997 Cincinatti Sabre 750 with Acramatic 2100 control. Been using it daily for the past 11 years, been a great machine, but now, for reasons unknown to me when I turn the machine on I get an on screen error:

Group Error
Cannot open program group 'main'. Do you want the program manager to still try to load it in the future?

I select 'yes' and the machine continues to boot up and I run the machine. I don't notice any thing missing as far as functionality goes, but maybe I am and just don't know it yet. Any suggestions or comments are welcomed. The touch screen wnet out on me about 6 months ago but the mouse cursor still functions so I have not dropped the big bucks to get the touch screen back.

Thanks

[maver1ck]

Based on the decsription, I'm assuming you are running NT3.51 in this control. The error sounds like it is having a problem loading the "Main" group. For lack of a better description, this is the folder that contains the links to run some of Windows standard applications (i.e. explorer).

Have you, or anyone else in your shop been going into the Windows interface? It's possible this group was inadvertently moved or deleted.

Do you have a backup of your hard drive? If you do, putting it in should get rid of the problem since it sounds exclusively Windows based.

If you don't have a backup hard drive, I'd consider making one now in case this is an indication your hard drive is starting to fail, just be sure to read all the warnings in the other threads on doing a backup before doing it yourself.

At a minimum, you should do a current backup of your machine dependent data immediately so if you have to replace the hard drive, you have a current copy of all your settings.

[cnckid]

Right you are on the NT 3.51. I am the only one here so if something was screwed up I am to blame. The only thing I can think of that I did was to go into the settings to change the time from daylight time to standard time a month or so ago. Other than that I don't use the windows programs (explorer, etc), just the programming and setup pages. I have a flash drive from Jacobson in the machine for the past couple of years and no problems. My original hard drive is in the lock cabinet in the office. My floppy drive went out about 5 years ago so I use the RS232 port to upload and download my programs. Is there a way to do a backup using the RS232 port? I have backups of my system on floppys but they are useless now. I don't even have a computer in the shop with a working floppy drive so I do need to back up everything via the RS232 port if possible.
Thanks,
Mike

[maver1ck]

I've always worked with ethernet or floppy on these machines so I've never had to set up RS-232 on them. It should be possible to backup through RS-232, but I've never tried it.

When you do the backup of machine dependent data, you can select a path (or drive) to export it to. If your com port is set up properly, I think you can choose com1 as the device when choosing the path.

If this doesn't work for you, try exporting the data file to the C: drive and then transfer it to your shop computer like any other text file. When you create the machine dependent data file it will be named it M1Y-****.bck (unless you specify another name). The **** will be last 4 digits of your control serial number.

If you still have the original hard drive, this is less critical because you can always recreate the data file you need from the original drive (as long as it works). The only things you will be missing are changes made after you took the original hard drive out.