Craft Edge

If you have a Windows 7 computer and SCAL2 is freezing at the cutting mat stage, here's a fix. Apparently the problem is caused by a Windows driver that stalls.

How to fix freezing problem in SCAL2:

Download 2.06.02 driver from this site:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/D2XX.htm

Create a new folder on your desktop named NEW DRIVER. Unzip the files to the NEW DRIVER folder.

Plug in your USB cable to your computer and turn on Cricut machine.

Click Start, then click Control Panel, then click Hardware and Sounds, then under Devices and Printers click Device Manager

Click on the right > next to Universal Serial Bus Controllers. A drop down list will appear.

Right click on USB Serial Converter. Then click Update driver software and select the NEW DRIVER folder on your desktop with the unzipped driver files. Windows will install them for you.

Please Note: I am heading out of town tonight and won't be able to answer any questions posted to this thread until I get back from our trip.

I know you're gone for the weekend (wonderful person who suggested this fix!), but I wanted to share my results. I loaded everything up as suggested and my cricut now seems to cut a single letter, but if I type a word then it will still freeze and crash. I really can't see it being the speed of my computer, or memory, because this is a brand new i5 with tonnes of space and speed. Any suggestions from anyone else? I'm starting to get frustrated. I get a couple of hours a week to scrapbook at the most and don't like spending it fiddling with a program that should be working.

A couple of thoughts:

Can you cut any of the shapes from the SCAL library or from a svg or scut file? If you can, then I suspect your problem is related to fonts. Some fonts don't work well in SCAL or you may run into a problem if you have too many fonts installed on your computer.

If you can't cut any type of file then try these possible fixes:

Right click on the SCAL icon and select compatibility then run as admin.

You could also try changing the compatibility mode to run in XP Service Pack 2 mode.

Try going back to an older SCAL update like 8 or 5 and see if that works.

Make sure your Cricut firmware matches to the version that is selected in SCAL.

Also, turn off your virus software before loading and running SCAL. Some brands cause a conflict with SCAL and will cause it to freeze.

schnauzerkisses wrote:I know you're gone for the weekend (wonderful person who suggested this fix!), but I wanted to share my results. I loaded everything up as suggested and my cricut now seems to cut a single letter, but if I type a word then it will still freeze and crash. I really can't see it being the speed of my computer, or memory, because this is a brand new i5 with tonnes of space and speed. Any suggestions from anyone else? I'm starting to get frustrated. I get a couple of hours a week to scrapbook at the most and don't like spending it fiddling with a program that should be working.