Prevent Segmentation Violation Errors

Summary

Segmentation Violations may occur during using ArcView under a variety of circumstances. Use these tips to prevent Segmentation Violations and to more easily solve them when one does occur.

Procedure

1. Every time you open a project, save a back-up before doing any editing or making any changes. This way if anything happens, you can revert to the working copy.
2. Never ignore a segmentation violation. Following a segmentation violation, ArcView is in an unstable state. If the project is saved, there is a good chance that the unstable elements will be written to the APR file. This will cause a segmentation violation the next time the project is accessed. If a segmentation violation occurs while working on a Project, stop working, and save the project as a different name. Then restart ArcView and open the new APR file that was just created. Hopefully no errors will occur. However, if an error does you can revert back to the original copy.
3. Stream-line your ArcView projects. Remove any unneeded elements from the project. If a Theme, Table, Script, Layout, View, or Chart is no longer in use get rid of it.
4. Turn off extensions when you are done with them. Some extensions may not be available to turn off if certain elements are stored in the APR. Extensions, such as the Geoprocessing, Digitizer, Legend Tool, and Graticule and Grid extensions only need to be activated during use.
5. Practice new operations in a new project. If you are about to perform a new procedure, test a script, or use an extension for the first time, set up a test project. Once you are familiar with how the procedure, script, or extension works, you can move the process back to your main project.
6. Verify that the directory path to the data does not exceed the maximum characters allowed by the OS.