MediaLab freezes between transition of questionnaires and DirectRT

We have a MediaLab experiment that starts with questionnaires and then is followed by a task in DirectRT. My problem sounds very similar to the one people were having when they had two or more DirectRT programs in an experiement. However, we only have one. Probably 9 out of 10 times, MediaLab will freeze when transitioning between the questionnaires and the DirectRT program. It is a pale purple screen, with a black bar across the bottom, and the START menu appears. Help please.

Try creating a simple 3 item questionnaire in MediaLab: An instruction item, your DirectRT session, and then another instruction item. Make sure everything is running local on your hard drive (as opposed to on a network). Try running just that simple questionnaire in MediaLab now and see if you have the same problem. If so, please zip the folder and I'll see if I can replicate the problem here.

I've been working with the above issue and have since resolved the problem. Microsoft Access was interfering. When I open Access and Exit it fully, the transition between MediaLab and DirectRT works fine. Thanks for the help!

Was Access open during the sessions before? Just curious. If not--how did you ever figure that out!?

Access was not open, but I just happened to have the data folder open and saw a temporary Access file being created while MediaLab and DirectRT were transitioning. I opened Access from the Start Menu and when I closed out of Access and reran the experiment, it worked fine. Now if we open and close out of Access before running the experiment, it works, but without doing so, the transition faiils.

I have two DirectRT input files within a MediaLab experiment that uses a responses.xls file. DirectRT often freezes when running experiment conditions that run questionnaires that modify the responses.xls file before running DirectRT, but usually not when running conditions that run DirectRT before running questionnaires that modify the responses.xls file. I'm not sure if this is coincidence. Also, I noticed a Microsoft Access temporary data-locking file in the experiment directory, which makes me wonder whether Access is conflicting with DirectRT. I am not using Access for anything. Any suggestions?