HELP! My program Won't Launch!!!

Issue

I tried to open my program On-Screen Takeoff, Quick Bid, or Digital Production Control today and it exhibits one or more of the following symptoms or something similar:

• Won't launch
• Produced an error message and then crashed
• Generate an error message but launched (opened)
• Runs significantly slower than yesterday
• Cannot connect to licensing servers, network databases and other resources, or Planroom projects.

They worked fine yesterday but today, the won't run. What gives?

Discussion

There are many reasons why a program 'suddenly' stops working:

• Virus Scan/MalWare programs may incorrectly identify one or more of On Center's program files as a 'threat' and quarantine or remove it from the computer. (Examples of protection utilities include Norton Internet Protection, McAfee, Microsoft Security Essentials, * endpoint protection packages, Ad-Aware, MalwareBytes, and many others.)
• Windows Updates (especially automatic, behind the scenes updates) may cause one or more critical components to stop working.
• Another installation may have replaced Window's files that On Center's programs rely on.
• Your computer may have been infected with a virus or malware

If you haven't installed an upgrade to your On Center software product overnight, odds are it is not a problem with your OCS applications - something has likely changed within your computer's environment that is affect the application. This can be caused by one or more of the following events:

• Virus Scan/MalWare programs may incorrectly identify one or more of On Center's program files as a 'threat' and quarantine or remove it from the computer. (Examples of protection utilities include Norton Internet Protection, McAfee, Microsoft Security Essentials, * "endpoint protection" packages, Ad-Aware, MalwareBytes, and many others.)
• Windows and other Microsoft Updates (Wednesday morning is one of the business days at any tech company because Microsoft sends out Window (and other MS products) updates on Tuesday nights. These updates may be occurring in the background on your computer, depending on how you have your computer setup. Many of these updates affect shared components on a system.
• Driver updates - drivers are little pieces of software that allow Windows to recognize and work with the various hardware attached to your computer. When these drivers get updated, they can cause problems if they do not install correctly or if the company hasn't fully tested them.
• Other software updates - sometimes, updates to programs that OCS products do not even rely on or interact with can change system settings in a manner that affects OCS products.
• Your firewall settings may have been modified by your network administrator or infrastructure group. This can cause you to lose your license or fail license validation or fail to reach your license manager. This can also cause broken links to image files and the inability to download planroom files from within the software.
• Your infrastructure group may have modified your user rights - this can cause numerous problems on your system.
• Another installation may have replaced Window's files that On Center's programs rely on.
• Your computer may have been infected with a virus or malware.

On Center Software Support personnel may be able to assist you with identifying a problem related to your system but they may not be able to resolve all issues, especially those related to Windows Updates, other product installs/upgrades, network and infrastructure changes, etc. as they are not caused by OCS software. It is recommended to get your network administrator/IT person involved right away to get you back to work as quickly as possible.

Resolution

Well, there's some investigating you can do. There are reasons too numerous to be fully documented here why your applications may not work today when they've been working fine. Here are some things you must check:

• First, the easiest thing to try is simply uninstalling, the re-installing the program. See Related Articles for the Product Information page for your product and download the installer. Use your Windows Help to uninstall the affected program, then use the newly downloaded installer to re-install it.
• Contact your network administrator/IT group and ask them to check to see if anything has been updated on your computer or network overnight. This is often the #1 reason your OCS software will suddenly (overnight) stop working. Be sure to check
• Windows updates
• Microsoft updates
• Drivers
• Ancillary software (Adobe Reader, for example)
• VirusScan and Firewall protection (sometimes called "internet security" or "endpoint protection" software)
• Check your virus scanner to see if it has blocked, or isolated, or deleted a file related to On Center Software. Create an EXCEPTION for the program in question (for example, recently (10/9/2013), a virus protection utility mistakenly identified a key dll On-Screen Takeoff uses that is stored in "C:\Program Files\On-Screen Takeoff 3" (or C:\Program Files (86)\On-Screen Takeoff 3" if you are using a 64 bit system...). Adding an exception to the virus scanning utility, resolved the issue in the short-term. Be sure to contact the vendor of your virus scanning software to let them know about the mistake and for assistance with setting up exceptions (every package is a little different and there is no way for On Center Software to provide instructions for each).
• Verify your computer has the ability to reach the licensing server(s) directly - your network administrator and/or IT person can usually troubleshoot this from your computer for you.
• Verify that your user rights have not changed - this normally involves YOU signing into a different PC to see if the problem persists; then have another user sign into YOUR computer to see if the problem persists, then have a local administrator sign into your PC to test.

Windows Updates

If your computer worked fine Tuesday and there's something amiss Wednesday morning, very likely a Windows Update may be the culprit. You can check your Windows Update History in Control Panel. You may need to do a System Restore back to a previous time when you know the programs worked correctly. Please see your Windows Help for assistance with System Restore and configuring your Windows Updates.

Recently Installed Programs

Check your Programs and Features to see what is been installed recently. In the screen shot below, you can see the last programs installed (sorted by Installed On date) are On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid. If there was another program that had been installed recently, that could be the culprit.

Virus/Malware Protection

Sometimes, a well-meaning malware protection utility thinks that one or more Program Files is a threat and then quarantines or removes it. This will cause problems with the program. Sometimes, you can simply re-install OST or QB, but often, you will have to configure your malware program to ignore the OST/QB program files folders:

(for 32 bit, omit "(x86)")

• C:\Program Files (x86)\On-Screen Takeoff 3
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Quick Bid 4

You also need to contact the vendor of your malware utility/virus scanning program to report that this file is not a threat. On Center's software is published in accordance with standard software procedures so our files should not be considered a threat.

Some files installed by the products may be identified as Malicious/Threat

hostIDGenerator.dll

depending on the product(s) you own/install, this may be located in any of these folders:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\On-Screen Takeoff 3 *
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Quick Bid 4 *
• C:\Windows\SysWOW64 (64 Bit Windows)
• C:\Windows\System32 (32 Bit Windows)

FNPLicensingService.exe

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Macrovision Shared\FLEXnet Publisher\

* remove the "(x86)" for 32 Bit Windows installations