I have a simple round shaft supported a bearing at one end and fixed at the other.  For the bearing end I've used a bearing connector.

A gravity & temperature load are applied

So far, so good  - the analysis runs and gives more or less the expected answer.

Then I add a distributed mass to the shaft.  The analysis fails with the extremely unhelpful message "Failed". 

I've tried playing with various bearing parameters, turning on "Allow self-alignment" allows the analysis to run but in my case that's not physically realistic

Has anyone encounted this or does anyone have any suggestions?

Sw 2012 x64 SP4 on Windows 7 x64