Mechanical Solver doesn’t start

- November 23, 2021 at 12:50 am
  
  julien_senon
  Subscriber
  
  Hi everybody,
  It's the first time I want to run a simulation with Mechanical (Fluent works with any issues).
  However, when i try to solve my model, the progress bar stop at 10% and the error message appear :
  "An error occured while starting the solver module. Please refer to the Troubleshooting section in the Ansys Mechanical User Guide for more information"
  It's not a problem with my model, because when I take the simulation file made by a friend on another computer (and working on it), the same error appear.
  I have search a lot about this issue but any answer work for me, I'm a little disappointed and I need help please.
  Bests regards,
  Julien
- November 23, 2021 at 5:06 pm
  
  mrife
  Ansys Employee
  
  Hi @julien_senon the WB Mechanical solve process is a multi-step and program process. So to troubleshoot it would help to know at which step the error occurs. Some typical issues are:
  1) Various Project issues;
  a)Where was the WB Project saved (full path)? A DOS command window does not understand UNC paths 'out of the box' so if the project was saved to the style of \\computername\path\ then the solver will fail to start up since the DOS command window can't find the file path.
  b) Was the WB Project saved to a MS OneDrive folder? OneDrive often has back-up, or other, features enabled that can lock files. So the solver cannot access the input file Mechanical wrote.
  c) External drives, like a USB connection drive, can have very slow transfer rate and the solver not start as it 'thinks' it cannot access the file.
  2) Start up process; for a distributed parallel solve the solver start up process is (let's say the version is 2021R2 or 212): ansys212.exe starts and launches mpiexec.exe, which in turn starts N instances of ansys.exe where N is the number of cpu cores being used. Security programs like anti-virus, anti-malware, and even most VPNs can block any of those from starting up. Use the task manager to monitor while you click 'solve' and see what is starting up. What happens?
  Try to gather the needed info to look into 1 and 2 and we will go from there.
  Mike