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- From: camdna@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Darren Natale)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
- Subject: Windows crash
- Message-ID: <Bx9Kyo.Isu@acsu.buffalo.edu>
- Date: 5 Nov 92 22:25:00 GMT
- Sender: nntp@acsu.buffalo.edu
- Organization: University at Buffalo
- Lines: 51
- News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41
- Nntp-Posting-Host: ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu
-
- I've reached my wit's end on this, so I appeal to the collective wisdom
- of the net...
-
- I have been experiencing some rather maddening difficulties running DOS
- programs under Windows. I'll describe just two (for now):
-
- I have been using a DOS file manager included with the old Word
- Perfect Library utilities. If I try to access the "windows" directory, the
- program crashes. Interestingly, this is the only directory access that will
- result in a crash--in other words, the file manager program will successfully
- navigate through every directory (except windows) without incident. Also,
- the program crash only occurs when the FM is run from windows--if I exit
- windows and run the program from DOS, it works completely fine. I don't suspect
- the problem is with the PIF settings, since the same settings are used under
- the same conditions on other computers without any problem--it is definitely
- computer-specific.
- The only difference between this and other computers I can think of
- that might explain the problem is that the crash-happy computer uses a SCSI
- drive. We recently upgraded to Windows 3.1 in the hope that the double-buffering
- capacity of SMARTDRIVE might alleviate the problem, but it did not. I have
- also suspected a conflict in memory with a video or network board, but
- EMMExcluding A000-EFFF in the [386Enh] section of system.ini had no effect.
- Nothing I've tried has prevented the program from hanging. This brings
- me to the second problem--when the program hangs, I had hoped that the local
- reboot feature of Windows 3.1 would at least allow the program to go down
- gracefully, but again it's no go. If the program hangs and I <Ctrl>-<Alt>-Del,
- Windows will capture the warm boot as it is supposed to. But when I press
- <Enter> to exit the crashed program, I'm returned to the program instead of to
- the Windows session. A second attempt at this same sequence of steps is
- successful about 25% of the time--the other 75% the computer hangs with both the
- video gone awry (either blanks, writes smiley faces to the screen in a mock
- C:\ prompt, or does what can best be described as "the wave") and the keyboard
- locked.
-
- The system:
- CompuAdd 333
- 16 MB RAM
- Phoenix BIOS 1989
- SCSI hard drive
- DOS 5.0
- Windows 3.1
- ATI Graphics Ultra
- Grey-Scale card, Internet card, probably others I don't know about
- several SCSI cards for Tape drive, CD-ROM, HP ScanJet
-
- Maybe there's just too much sh*t on it? :)
-
- Thanks for any insights you may have.
-
- DN
-
-