Fatal Application Error Encountered in Studio 5000 Logix Designer

 

As I was prepping to film additional lessons for my CompactLogix course yesterday, I ran into a completely new Studio 5000 Logix Designer “Fatal Error” that I hadn't run into before.

After I duplicated the issue on two different PCs, each running two different Windows 10 VMs, I was convinced something was wrong with the software and not just my installation.

NOTE: For those who are having this issue and need to fix it asap, use this LINK to scroll down to the details about the fix I implemented.

In fact, over the last few months I've been spending a lot of time in RSLogix 5000 v20, and Studio 5000 Logix Designer v30, creating and refining the code and scenarios for my Compact Basics course's new programming lessons.

Not having run into any issues with either v20 or v30, you can probably imagine that I was a little frustrated during rehearsals for my “Studio 5000 First Look” lesson, when every time I tried to create a v21 project Studio 5000 crashed.

And since I was able to easily duplicate the issue on multiple VMs, I figured it had to be a known bug, so I pointed my browser at Rockwell's Knowledgebase to search for a solution.

Sadly, while I did find two tech notes covering this error, it appears that just being a customer who purchased this expensive software wasn't enough to unlock the solutions to this bug:

Off Topic: After submitting many and varied messages to Rockwell about how tech notes like these (you know, the ones with information you need to actually get the product you purchased to work) should not be locked, I've come to the conclusion either they don't read customer feedback, or they just don't agree with these sentiments.

Since I had purchased a support contract last summer to gain access to the latest software updates (albeit with delayed access to Studio 5000 updates as I don't own the most expensive editions,) I logged with my account in order to unlock them (links below:)

• RSLogix 5000/Studio 5000 : 0xc0000005 fatal error during startup (requires support contract to view)
• Studio 5000 / RSLogix 5000 : Fatal Error 0xc0000005 on Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 (requires support contract to view)

To summarize what I learned, it appears that installing newer versions of Studio 5000 can break older versions, something software vendors have been struggling with since the introduction of the personal computer.

That said, after reading through the fixes detailed in those tech notes, I found that none of them were too appealing.

But by reading between the lines, and with a little experimentation, I found that I could resolve the issue with a simple change I'll detail below:

 

How to stop Studio 5000 Logix Designer from causing a Fatal Application Error:

Step 1: Navigate to the “Launcher” directory in your “Studio 5000” installation directory.

On my VM it was: C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockwell Software\Studio 5000\Launcher

Step 2: Next, right click on the Launcher application, then select Properties, and then click on the compatibility tab:

Step 3: Here, set the Launcher to run “as an Administrator,” and then click on Ok:

Step 4: Now when you run Studio 5000, you'll see a “User Account Control” confirmation popup as shown below. I'll leave it up to you if you'd like to make changes to your UAC settings to disable this message:

Step 5: After you're done with Studio 5000, you'll probably notice this window asking if the issue has been resolved (I clicked on “Yes” which seemed to stop this message reappearing:)

Now while I've just run into this issue myself, I'm sure some of you ran into it months or even years ago.

That being the case, it's likely one of you have come up with a newer or better fix, and if you have we'd all love to hear it!

You can share it with us along with any thoughts, questions, or opinions you have by clicking on the “post a comment or question” link below.

Sincerely,

Shawn Tierney
Automation Instructor and Blogger
If you enjoyed my article, you may like my courses at TheAutomationSchool.com