The following serves as a quick method of identifying known and popular causes of instability of ShoWorks. Proceed through each step until the problem is resolved. The first item solves over 70% of stability issues.

1. Click "Start" then type "ShoWorks 2020 Info" (do not include quotes) and hit the Enter key. ShoWorks 2012 users should substitute "2016" in place of "2020". In the dialog box, look at the third line from the bottom Memory (RAM):. Per the minimum requirements of ShoWorks, The amount "Available" must be greater than 5GB. If the amount "Available" is less than 5.0 GB, you must upgrade the machine to the minimum requirements of ShoWorks.
2. Click "Start" then type "uninstall a program" (do not include quotes) and hit the Enter key. In the sorted list of installed programs, identify any program with the words Microsoft and the word Office or Access. That is for example, Microsoft Office 2013 Professional or Microsoft Access Runtime 2010 would qualify. Of the programs that meet this criteria, all must have the same year after them. For example having both, Microsoft Office 2019 Professional and Microsoft Access 2016 would cause instablity in ShoWorks. Having both Microsoft Office 2013 Student Edition and Microsoft Access Runtime 2007 would cause instability in ShoWorks. You may only have one "year" (version) of Microsoft Office components (which includes Access) on the same machine.
3. Check the version of Microsoft Office (if present on the machine) to insure that it is not 64-bit. Use these instructions: http://tinyurl.com/msoffice64bitcheck Microsoft Office 64-bit version does not support third party solutions such as ShoWorks. If your version is 64-bit (using the steps above to determin), then you must uninstall Office and reinstall the 32-bit version of Office. More information as to why Microsoft recommends against 64-bit Office for most users, may be found here: http://tinyurl.com/msoffice64bit
4. Check if Microsoft Access (if present on the machine) to insure that your license is activated. To do this, click the Windows Start button and look for the Access program icon, if it is not present, then skip this step. Otherwise, start Access and then click Blank database, then Create, then File (tab at the top left), then Account, then About Access.
   
   (optional) An advanced but faster and more detailed method is by command prompt. Click Start, type cmd, then hit Enter. Type or copy/paste cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16 and hit Enter. If you have a different version of Office, such as Office13, then replace Office16 with Office13 or whatever version you have. Then type cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus and hit Enter. Observe the line that reads "LICENSE STATUS" to ensure it is "LICENSED".
5. Check the antivirus product(s) on the machine. "Sophos Endpoint Security", "ESET NOD32 Antivirus", "Trend Micro Security", "Malwarebytes", and "Symantec Endpoint Protection" are known to cause instability in programs such as ShoWorks which require heavy resource availability. Unless you have a large amount of available RAM (beyond 8GB available and 16GB installed), disable and/or remove if present and use a ligherweight (but just as reputable) anti-virus such as Microsoft Security Essentials.
6. Avoid saving custom reports over a name that already exist. For example, if you have a custom report named "MyReport" and modify it or create a new report and save it with the same name (i.e. save with a name of "MyReport"), you will be prompted to overwrite the existing report of a same name. Do not do this, but instead give the report a new name, and afterwards you can delete the original report. Saving a report over an existing name will cause Microsoft Access to lose the index of custom reports (corrupt all custom reports) and you will subseqnetly no longer be able to backup that particular custom report. This is a known and reported bug to Microsoft.
7. Click "Start" then type "Windows Update" (do not include quotes). After running the update, restart Windows and repeat "Windows Update" until no more updates are found. This may require multiple restarts.
8. Run the latest update patch for ShoWorks, found here.
9. Uninstall and reinstall ShoWorks.