Hi Fiona,

Thanks for your post, and sorry to read that problems are persisting for you.

From what you've described there seems to be little / no pattern to the crashes. I would suggest looking to create crash dump files so that Sage Technical Support can investigate the cause. You can contact support here: Sage Technical Support If you can recall / note any of the error messages it would be good to share those with the support team as well.

Replacing the PCs and updating Windows rules out some areas that Technical Support would check, but they may also want to check that your dataset is within the recommended limits and if any third party software links with Sage 50 Accounts.

Andy,
Sage UKI

Hi Andy

I will call support again and let then know what you have suggested, although I have called them a number of times and noone has suggested creating crash dump files.

It doesn't happen immediately when someone first logs on, it is after an hour or so, as though sage just runs out of memory. I am now keeping a crash log, this is an example:

In Transactions ledger, searching for an invoice,   system just crashed

In customer activity.

Running an Aged debtors report

Selected bank feeds (we dont use this) got a critical error.

Running SL statements

Printing a batch of statements "this report is corrupt and cannot be opened" - but worked after reseting.

I know its not an error in the file / report / account because it works before / after the crash.

I think I could actually make my system crash by running a number of reports / activity searches.

We do use third party, but it does not crash sage, except one time when we were posting transactions across and we ended up having to restore.  Our 3rd party software is 32 bit and we have been instructed by them that sage must be 32 bit too, but I think you advised earlier this would make no difference.

thanks

Fiona

You have probably covered all of this but just in case it might help see below.

We have been using Sage 50 for about 15 years with circa 15  Win 11 laptops and PC's connected to a HP micro server running Win 11 Pro and Sage 50.

On the whole it works well and is quick, but when we do have issues (crashing & data corruption) it almost always relates to the Anti-virus or windows Defender, especially on the machine acting as the server.

We have found Windows 11 to be more problematic than when we used Windows 10 as the operating system.

Ensuring you have the AV exceptions (files and folders) listed is a must.

Also, don't forget when you upgrade to add in new system files (caught us out a few times).

Other things that keep it running smoothly is regularly deleting data, then re-indexing and compressing (we do it monthly). We only ever keep 13 months data even though the number of transactions etc is considerably less than Sage recommends, as the difference in performance is noticeable.

Hi  just wanted to add an update.

We have discovered that the issue is with 32bit sage 50  version 32.   I believe because we have a good amount of data (but within the recommended limits), that 32bit cannot cope .   We don't have the issue with the test company, but that only has 1500 transactions, so no comparison there.  

One of our users, who was having the most issues was the person handling credit control, Sales Ledger > Chase Debt.   She could not print statements and letters, it crashed continually.   Same when I tried it on my pc, so I know it was not down to one user / one pc.

FYI we all have new pcs running windows 11.

Sage have agreed that this is an issue and provided compensation.   The problem is not really resolved, however we are getting around this by changing two of our users to 64 bit sage, these are the users who don't use our 3rd party software (32bit) as much.

It has taken me since October - 5 months to come to this resolution.  I wish I had never upgraded our software, yet I thought I was being proactive.

Hi Chris

Thank you for your suggestions.   I was adding a final comment at the same time as you were posting.

We had checked our AV and knew it wasn't that, but good suggestion.   As you have also suggested; I think it comes down to the volume of data and Sage50 32bit.   I think I will be more proactive with clearing our audit trail, however as an accounts person I find it very helpful accessing older data.   Moving to 64 bit seems to have solved the problem meantime.

Cheers

Fiona

Hi Fiona,

Glad to hear you have found a solution.

I have felt like you a few times were you wish you hadn't bothered with the update.

We did the V32 last week and fortunately was all OK.

We try to say well under the recommended limits as the performance difference is noticeable.

I get however it is a fine balance of keeping lots of data for reporting especially when looking a trends.

Chris