Tried posting this in Artsoft forum and got crickets. Really hoping someone here may be able to point me in the right direction:
Been running a home built CNC router for years now using Mach 3 running on an old 32 bit computer operating on Windows 7 with a parallel port. Has always been completely reliable.
This weekend, fired the machine up. Can jog in all three axis just fine and interface all looks normal, but as soon as I hit “load g-code” the Mach 3 screen disappears. Gone! Have to restart the computer to try again with same result each time. Everything else seems to be running fine - AutoCAD 2000, Vectric Cut 2D & 3D, web browsers...
Have tried uninstalling Mach 3 (saved my license file and XML files), reinstalled but same thing still happens. Even went through hard drive and erased everything I could find related to Mach 3, defragged the drive, reinstalled Mach 3, and... same thing. Reluctant to go further (ie. format hard drive and start all over as don’t have any way to reinstall my old copy of AutoCAD 2000, or likely Win 7).
Searched around and found one post from back in 2011 that sounded similar but solution wasn’t complete and didn’t understand most of what was being discussed (warning - computer simpleton here!)
Help? Miss my machine! ????