HoopsideTroubleshooting
Why your machine rejects an embroidery file
The machine says it cannot read the design, or shows nothing at all. It is almost never a broken machine. Here are the six causes, in the order they are worth checking.
1. It is the wrong format
The commonest cause. Your machine reads one family — PES for Brother, JEF for Janome, VP3 for Husqvarna and Pfaff, EXP for Melco and Bernina, XXX for Singer — and most designs are sold in DST. Convert it properly; do not rename it.
2. Someone renamed the extension
If a file called design.pes was a DST five minutes ago, the machine sees DST bytes under a PES name and refuses. Open the design in a viewer that identifies files by content: if it tells you the file is really a DST, you have found your problem.
3. The download was cut short
A truncated file often still has a valid-looking header, so software opens it and shows almost nothing — a couple of stitches, or an empty design. If a design opens but looks empty, download it again rather than assuming it is corrupt at the source.
4. It is in the wrong place on the USB stick
Several machines only look in a particular folder, or only at the root, or want the stick formatted FAT32. A design the machine never looks at is indistinguishable from a design it cannot read. Check your manual for the expected path before concluding the file is bad.
5. The design is bigger than the hoop
Some machines refuse outright rather than explaining. Check the design's real size in millimetres against the hoop you have — a design can be listed as "5×7" and still measure 132 mm across.
6. Too many stitches or too many colour changes
Older and entry-level machines have limits on stitches per design and on colour blocks. A dense 60,000-stitch design may simply be beyond what the machine will accept.
Check the file first, on the phone. Five of these six are visible before you go anywhere near the machine: what the file really is, whether it is truncated, how big the design is, how many stitches it has and how many colour stops. That is the whole reason to look at a design on the phone first.
What is not the cause
Designs do not "expire", and a design that worked last year has not gone stale. If a file used to load and now does not, suspect the copy — re-download it — rather than the design.
How to tell these apart in two minutes
Open the file on your phone before you go near the machine. What the viewer says narrows it immediately:
| The viewer says | The cause is |
|---|---|
| It opened, and the format is not what the name claimed | A renamed extension — cause 2 |
| It opened but the design is empty or a couple of stitches | A truncated download — cause 3 |
| It opened and looks right, but is 160 mm wide | Bigger than the hoop — cause 5 |
| It opened and is 70,000 stitches with 20 colour stops | Beyond the machine's limits — cause 6 |
| It opened and everything looks fine | Wrong format for your machine, or the wrong folder — causes 1 and 4 |
Only the last row needs anything doing at the machine. The other four are answered from the sofa.
The one that wastes the most time
Cause 4, the folder, catches more people than it should, because nothing about it looks like an error. The stick is in, the file is on it, and the machine shows an empty list. If your model expects designs at the root, a design tidily filed in a subfolder is invisible to it; if it expects a named directory, a design at the root is invisible instead.
Check the manual once and label the stick. It is a five-minute fix that otherwise recurs forever.
When the design really is broken
Genuinely corrupt designs exist, but they are rarer than the five causes above. The tell is a file that fails the same way from two different sources — re-downloaded, re-sent, still unreadable. At that point go back to the seller; a design that will not decode is a design they need to re-export.
Related
- How to convert a DST to PES — and why renaming the file fails — What a real format conversion does to the stitches, and why changing the extension produces a file the machine refuses.
- Stitch count, size and hoop fit: reading a design before you stitch — What the numbers on a design mean, and which ones decide whether it is worth starting.
- How to open a PES file on your phone — What a .pes file is, how to view one on Android, and what to check before you hoop anything.
Check the file before you blame the machine
Hoopside opens PES, DST, JEF, EXP, VP3, XXX and PEC designs on Android and shows each one the way it will stitch — real size, stitch count, numbered colour stops and the thread list. Viewing is free, with no ads and no account, and nothing leaves your phone.
