I had some trouble getting Mach3 to run the program initially. I thought it was something I was doing wrong. I have had it do this to me twice now. I load and configure the software correctly and I am actually able to run the motors. I am still bench testing until I am sure it isn't going to take off on me. So everything is tweaked in and it does fine for a day or so (computer off and on) I come back a week or so later and I get the error message "the parameter is incorrect" and I have to start all over again. I have to uninstall everything and reinstall to get it to work. Question is, would a bad motherboard battery cause all of this havoc?

Where do you see that error message? In Mach? What are you doing when you see that?
Hood

It will come up when I try to load/ start up Mach 3, also when I close it out. I always get a white screen also. If I uninstall the program and manually take out all of the remaining software and reload it will start working. The problem usually shows up when I have left the computer off for an extended period, or at least that's what it seems like.

What do you mean by "take out all of the remaining software and reload"
You meaning Mach? Have you tried just reinstalling Mach?
Sounds like your hard drive may be going bad and corrupting things.

Can you take some screenshots of the error message when you get it.
Hood

When I say I removed all software, I meant I uninstalled the driver and the Mach3 folder that still exists on the drive after you use the uninstall program. I also remove all icons from the desktop. From what I have found it is hit and miss doing it that way but I have had more luck getting it to run. I can try some screen shots tomorrow night if I'm lucky. The wife's cars radiator has decided to start leaking. Depends on how easy or hard it is to find the problem.

Well I finally took some screen shots about two weeks ago. I also replaced the CMOS battery. Looks like the problem has been solved, it think. The computer has been sitting idle for two weeks with the power removed and it has started up fine the last two days I tried it.

Good it is solved, cant think why a battery would affect Mach however as it doesnt care what date and time are, only thing I can think of is possibly the CMOS defaults set the parallel port to some mode that Mach cant use.
Hood

I am currently having the same issue. I had a computer crash this afternoon and after getting the thing to fire up again I get that message and a whit screen. I have tried removing the program and re-installing but to no avail. Same thing keeps happening.

Joe.

Attach your xml and I will see what it is like here although I suspect it may be your computer is the problem, corrupt hard drive or maybe even bad memory.
Hood

I noticed the white screen thing recently. It happened on a fresh install of mach on my NEW laptop that I use to write and debug code.
I thought I had installed the same version as I have installed on my CNC machine.
 I copied the XML file from my CNC to the laptop to quickly transfer all the same settings. Upon starting Mach on the laptop I got a white screen instead of the control panel. I re-installed the correct version and it was fine. I later had a look at the two XML's and they were different. One had some extra commands at the top. I would have thought the XML would have some notation at the top to say what version it came from. You know - the usual documentation. All I could tell was they were quite different in the first few lines.

Also adding to the confusion is that in the mach directory I found three xml's by slightly different names for mill. I couldn't remember which one was the name the program was using. So I put an X in front of the names one at a time and restated Mach. I guess when I got to the one it was looking for (and it wasn't there) I think I got a white screen as well.

So, in the case of the previous posts, maybe the XML was being corrupted by the flakey computer?

Hood:
You ask a lot of people to send you their XML's for analysis. Out of curiosity, how do you tell if it's correct for the version they're running?
Or if it's complete. There's a ton of stuff in there.

Sage