Segmentaion violation
The segmentation violation error message is very generic and not very diagnostic without other information. When does the segmentation violation occur?  Any of the following situations...................

1. On startup of the ArcView application? 

2. Opening a project?

3. When adding a theme to a view?

A.   On startup of the ArcView application?
If you receive the segmentation violation upon starting ArcView, without opening a project file, that is just starting it from the desktop icon or from the start menu check the following items.

1. Search the entire hard drive for a file called "default.apr", you should only find one file named default.apr and it should be located in the /etc directory. If you find additional default.apr files on your hard drive in the/temp or /windows/temp or any other directory rename them to default.old using a file management tool such as windows explorer.
2. If you are on a Windows 95 or 98 machine reboot in safemode and try to start ArcView while in safemode. To enter safemode press the F5 function key when you see "starting Windows 95 or 98" upon starting up your system. When you are in safemode you will see the word "safemode"in all four corners of your screen. You are not in safemode unless you see this. If you are on an NT machine choose start in VGA mode from the start up menu upon rebooting. Safemode loads up only the standard windows device drivers bypassing any customized drivers shipped by manufacturers of video cards, network cards, sound cards, etc. Safemode makes no permanent system changes and to restore your computer back to regular operation requires only a reboot
3. Turn off all TSR (Transient Stay Resident Programs) such as virus checkers and utilities such as Norton Discrete.

4. Do you have any devices such as a Zip or Jazz drive, an Intellimouse or any other accessories that may be causing conflicts? Disable any such devices for testing purposes and then try to restart ArcView after rebooting your machine.

If you receive the segmentation violation upon opening a project you will need to go through the project repair process. 

The document that describes the project repair process is technical note 1911 "Salvagingadamaged ArcView project file". 

If you receive the segmentation violation while adding a theme try thefollowing:

1. Locate the shapefile using a file management tool such as windowsexplorer. For example c:\data\shapes\states.shp, you will notice other files with the same name but with other file extensions such as .shx, .dbf, and possibly others .ain,.aih, .sbn, .sbx.

2. Rename the three primary files to something else like test.shp, test.dbf, and test.shx. Do not rename anyof the other files. Once you have renamed the three primary files movethem to a new directory that contains no other shapefiles or create a new directory and place them there.

3. In this new directory you should now have test.shp, test.dbf and test.shx.

4. Try to load this new theme into a view.  If you have no success the shapefile is corrupted and you will need to utilize a previously saved version of the shapefile, the backup copy.

<<salvaging_damaged_apr.doc>>