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Windows API error 21 (device not ready)

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Achimota
2006-10-12
2012-10-17
  • Achimota

    Achimota - 2006-10-12

    I am running Miktex 2.5 on a Windows XP platform. Most of the time when I try typing on a command line
    c:> latex simple.tex
    I get the error message
    "Windows API error 21: The device is not ready".

    I say "most of the time"; sometimes, it works just fine. It seemed to depend on the random contents of memory. I even wrote a small C program to initialize the contents of 100s of MBytes of RAM to 0x00 or some other value, and then run latex again. But this did not seem to have any effect.

    I have lots of free memory available -- about 28 Gbytes free hard-drive space and more than 500 Mbytes free RAM space. No other software on the computer seems to have any problem.

    If I try using latex.exe without a tex file, such as,
    c:> latex
    then it seems to operate normally. That is, the "Windows API error 21" may have something to do with not being able to access the tex file. But again, other times there is no problem at all.

    I have tried using DebugView with environment
    MIKTEX_TRACE=access,config,core,curl,dib,dvibitmap,dvicolor,dvigc,dvihypertex,dvipage,dvipkbitmap,dvipkchar,dvipkfont,dvisearch,dvitfm,dvivfchar,dvivfont,env,error,files,filesearch,fndb,fontinfo,mmap,mpm,packages,process,tempfile,values
    The last few lines of the result are:
    00001987 135.64683533 [3652] + videoCreateDriverList
    00001988 135.64689636 [3652] + videoFreeDriverList
    00001989 135.64692688 [3652] - videoFreeDriverList
    00001990 135.64707947 [3652] Drivers32: idx 0, DriverName vfwwdm32.dll ( 1c08e4 )
    00001991 135.64721680 [3652] videoCreateDriverList: DeviceList contains 1 Video Device(s).
    00001992 135.64726257 [3652] videoCreateDriverList: aCapDriverList[0]: DriverName vfwwdm32.dll, Desc WDM Video For Windows Capture Driver (Win32)
    00001993 135.64729309 [3652] - videoCreateDriverList
    00001994 135.65653992 [3652] + videoFreeDriverList
    00001995 135.65921021 [3652] - videoFreeDriverList

     
    • pinin4fjords

      pinin4fjords - 2007-04-24

      Hi there,

      I have this message too- only for me it is constant- i.e. it is currently impossible for me to get the latex files to compile. Does anyone have a solution?

      P

       
    • pinin4fjords

      pinin4fjords - 2007-04-24

      Actually it's one specific latex file, but it's only a problem with Miktex 2.5, it compiles fine on another PC with 2.4....

       
    • nikos_san

      nikos_san - 2007-06-13

      I am getting the same error (in some cases, not always) after I did the following:

      1) bought new PC
      2) installed MikTeX 2.6
      3) installed TeXnicCenter 1.0 beta 7.01

      In my old PC with miktex 2.5 this never happened.

      Moreover now for some strange reason the TeXnicCenter does not show the latex->PS->PDF anymore.

      Weird things happenning...

      N.

       
    • nikos_san

      nikos_san - 2007-06-13

      I found the error: I was trying to include a file "D:...\macros.tex" (remaining from my old installation) but in my new installation D: is the CDROM... Thus the API 21 error. High chance that something similar is happening with other guys too :-)

      N.

       

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