retter@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Rob Retter) (06/26/90)
Having installed MS Windows 3.0 on my 386SX backyard clone, I seem to have a problem with Windows interacting with my hard drive. The sequence of events is as follows: invoke "win" at the DOS "C:" prompt blue Windows intro screen appears, remains for approx 5 secs screen goes black, text cursor in upper left corner **** here screen should go grey and graphics cursor should **** appear in form of an hourglass, which soon disappears **** in favor of Program Manager window screen remains black with text cursor in upper left for approx 35 seconds DOS "C:" prompt returns This occurs often, but not always. Sometimes grey screen and hourglass appear, but remain for approx 30 seconds before "System Error" window appears with message "Cannot access drive C:". Options are Cancel and Retry. Retry works, and we continue into normal windows. Sometimes execution is perfectly normal from invocation up to point where I try to invoke an application (even the MS Windows accessories!). "Unrecoverable Application Error" window appears and Win 3.0 is pretty much fried. This has also happened when Saving a file within Notepad or Paint. Furthermore: some of the graphics bitmap files are a bit scrambled. For example, blue Windows intro screen has a dark line right through the MicroSoft logo. Ironic. Have re-installed several times and different files seem to be affected each time. Sometimes all appears normal until "Application Error". MS technical support told me that I needed to replace my DOS with the MS version (not the Compaq version I had) and reinstall Win 3.0. Didn't help a bit. Told me Win 3.0 uses BIOS calls to perform disk IO. I wondered why the DOS version would matter if it were a BIOS problem.....oh, well. I suspect a possible conflict between my AMI BIOS and my Precision motherboard, but I have no meaningful knowledge of hardware by which to judge. The other hardware attribute which might be relevant is my video card: an OEM Paradise 1024 card with 512K. Anyone seen this behavior on their machines with Win 3.0? Anyone have a suggestion for me to apply in fixing the problem? (Please, *nice* suggestions! I've already thought of all the others...) Thanks for your time. Please e-mail responses rather than post. - Rob Retter retter@se-sd.sandiego.ncr.com
paull@hplred.HP.COM (Robert Paull) (06/28/90)
Hi, I tried to install and run Windows 3.0 on my HIMS clone. (386/25,4 Megs/RAM, HP VGA) When I tried to run it [windows], the windows logo came up on the screen; the screen went to gray with the hour glass; then the screen went blank and the DOS prompt reappeared. The soultion in my case was to replace the HIMEM.SYS supplied in the W3.0 package with 386LIMIT.SYS (from Qualitas; shipped with my machine). From this point windows runs fine--in real mode. Also replaced MS-SMARTDRV with PC-CACHE. There seems to be less disk accesses unsing PC-CACHE. Now if I can figure out how to make it run in standard or 386 enhanced mode! Hope this helps some... BTW, I installed W3.0 on my HP VECTRA RS-25C (8-meg/ram) and encountered no problems at all. ________________________________________________________________ RP -> NRA(ILA..PVC..GBVF), GOC, GOA, PBS(KCSM..KTEH..KQED), ETC..