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BarTender is Crashing

Jarryd Bailey

BarTender Content Team

  • Updated

Symptom

A BarTender application repeatedly crashes unexpectedly, most commonly upon opening.

Environment 

BarTender 2016 and later

Solution

There are many potential culprits that might cause BarTender Designer or one of its companion applications to crash. In most cases, one of the following four causes is the core reason your installation of BarTender is unstable.

This article is a great place to begin addressing your issue, but this guide is not all-encompassing as some of these causes share similar or identical symptoms.

If none of the following solutions resolve your issue, please reach out to Technical Support for help.

The Label File is Corrupted

In this scenario, BarTender Designer crashes when you attempt to open a particular label. To help identify this issue, please consider the following:

  • Does BarTender Designer crash when you open this label, but work OK when you use or create another label?
  • Does this label behave the same way when you try to open it on another computer?

If the answer to both of the above questions is yes, the label is most likely corrupt. It will need to be recreated from scratch. In some cases, you can copy the contents of the corrupt label and paste them into a newly-created label.

Be aware that you can only copy the contents of the label, not the label file itself. If you copy the label file, the corruption will carry over.
  • Does the label open OK on one computer, but crash on all others?

If so, check to see if there is a database connection. Try saving the label after removing the database connection in the Database Connection Setup menu.

  • Is the label file you're attempting to open directly from an older version of BarTender?

Some old files may cause newer versions of BarTender to crash because they are associated with printers and settings that no longer exist. Here are some things you can try to rectify this:

  1. Open BarTender Designer directly without trying to open a file. Select File > Open and manually open the file. This will often allow it to open.
  2. Once open, set up the current printer through File > Print (It may be the same printer, but just re-select the printer anyway) then Save the file.
  3. It will warn you that you're updating to the latest label format. Select Yes and save.

Bad/Corrupt Printer Drivers

With this type of crash, BarTender typically crashes right after opening or when attempting to print. BarTender can also slow down significantly, printing successfully and not crashing, but with noticeable lag. If one of your printer drivers is corrupted, this crash/lag will occur when BarTender polls the printer drivers on your machine upon opening and whenever you print.

The solution is to remove and reinstall the offending printer driver:

  1. Uninstall the printer driver. You can use the Seagull Driver Wizard to accomplish this.

  1. Once the removal is complete, restart your computer.
  2. Reinstall your printer driver.

Corrupted BarTender Installation

Crashing can occur as the result of running antivirus or security software during the installation of BarTender.

  1. Run a repair on the BarTender installation from the Windows Add or Remove programs dialog.
  2. Select Modify and then Repair.

If the repair doesn't work, try uninstalling and installing BarTender. 

If that doesn't work, try again — but use the BarTender manual installation procedure instead to remove BarTender before reinstalling.

The Connection to the BarTender System Database is Faulty

To identify this as the issue and resolve it:

  1. Check the System Database Connection in Administration Console > System Database.

  1. Run the System Database Wizard to completion to confirm that the connection is still working.
  2. Check your logs for entries indicative of an issue connecting to the System Database.
    • This could be in the BarTender System Service log (C:\ProgramData\Seagull\Services\Logging\System.Service.txt) or in Event Viewer. Here is an example from Event Viewer.

  1. If there are any problems, make sure that the Windows or SQL user that is logging into the System Database was configured with the correct permissions.

If there is no current connection, a System Database is likely not set up and is not the issue.

Additional Resources

BarTender Crashes When Attempting to Connect to an IBM DB2 Database

Fixing a BarTender Crash by Enabling the Windows File Dialog

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