Chronos is the Maptek Vulcan scheduling package. It includes
block by block scheduling as well as an optional schedule optimizer. In Windows
7, new installations of Chronos require special settings in order to open
scheduling files.
I got a new computer today. I was pretty excited. Between
the i7 processor, solid state hard drive and 16 GB of RAM I couldn’t wait to
see what it did to my Chronos schedule. The initial answer was nothing. Chronos
froze when attempting to open a new workbook. I couldn't believe it. It wouldn't open a new workbook, an old workbook or anything else. It just crashed Vulcan every time I tried to open Chronos.
The problem turned out to be with the way Maptek Chronos interacts with
the Microsoft User Account Control Settings. These are the settings that dim
your computer screen and pop up a panel to warn you that changes are being made to your computer
(you remember the commercials with Mac and PC don’t you? The one where PC
had a secret service agent protecting him? “Mac has issued you a salutation,
cancel or allow?” This is that functionality). When Windows attempts to dim the
screen and give you a warning, it interrupts Chronos and crashes Vulcan.
To avoid this problem you just need to turn the User Account
Control Settings down a notch. Don’t turn them off (unless you really want to).
Vulcan will work with just slightly fewer restrictions.
- Go to the Control Panel
- Select ‘User Accounts’
- Select ‘User Accounts’ (yes, you have to select the same option twice on consecutive panels if you are displaying the Control Panel by category. How dumb is that?)
- Select ‘User Account Control Settings’
- Lower the setting one notch to ‘Don’t notify me when I make changes to Windows settings’
- Click ‘OK’
Next time you start Chronos (you must restart Vulcan for
changes to take effect) Vulcan should not crash. You can get this same result
by right clicking on the Vulcan icon and selecting ‘Run as Administrator’ but
you have to remember to do this every time you start Vulcan and want to open a
Chronos schedule too and really, who wants to do that?
Having to modify the operating system in order to run
software is not a best practice for expensive software. I asked Maptek support to log this as an upgrade
and was informed that it is part of the ‘Development Roadmap.’ They wouldn’t
give any more details than that so I’m not sure how serious they are about it.
Saying that an upgrade is on the ‘Development Roadmap’ sounds a lot like
working to ‘Make the Software Better.’ By which I mean to say that it is a good
goal, but without any actual targets it is unlikely that anything will actually
get done.
Next time you talk to Maptek support be sure to ask them
about the ‘Development Roadmap’ and how the work on User Account Control
Settings is coming.
*****New information about User Account Control Settings*****
*****New information about User Account Control Settings*****
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