prb@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Botts) (01/30/91)
I've run into a mysterious (to me) series of error messages from WIN3. I'm running it on a 286 with 2 megs of RAM and a VGA card and monitor, with SmartDrive enabled and himem.sys and ansi.sys installed. The only TSR is PC Tools Deluxe's "MIRROR" program, which takes only a few K. This setup has been working just fine for weeks, running both Windows and non-Windows applications. Tonight, though, while working in Corel Draw 1.21, I suddenly got a message box proclaiming a "UNRECOVERABLE APPLICATION ERROR"; Corel Draw was then aborted, putting me back in Program Manager (and costing me my work-in-progress). This happened _twice_ in an hour. In between those two events, I also got a message box telling me I was "Out of memory", with the second line of the box reading "#M5202" (without the quotes). This box appeared, I clicked on "Okay" to acknowledge it, it appeared again, I clicked Okay again, and then it went away and everything was cool. Corel Draw didn't abort, and I didn't lose the file (until the other error came back, which didn't seem related to this one). The thing is, nothing has changed in my system in the past few weeks that could have caused this to suddenly happen - I haven't added any TSRs, changed my config.sys, etc. Also, I could find no mention of either of these two messages in the WIN3 manual (there's a shocker, eh?). I have almost 10 megabytes of space on my hard drive, so it couldn't have to with the swap files, either, I don't think. So, what the hey? What's making these things start happening, all of a sudden? So far, they've only occured in Corel Draw, which is the only Windows application getting heavy use on this machine. Thanx in advance for any and all advice.... PAUL BOTTS prb@chinet.chi.il.us
eparker@megatest.UUCP (Eric Parker) (02/01/91)
From article <1991Jan30.051400.5466@chinet.chi.il.us>, by prb@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Botts): > Tonight, though, while working in Corel Draw 1.21, I suddenly got a > message box proclaiming a "UNRECOVERABLE APPLICATION ERROR"; Corel Draw > ... stuff deleted ... > PAUL BOTTS > prb@chinet.chi.il.us I have been having similar problems. Things will work OK for a while, I get the "UNRECOVERABLE APPLICATION ERROR" message, sometimes my system will just start to reboot by itself, other times it will start screaming. In my case I am using ansel to process large scanned images. I have worked pretty hard at figuring this out. This is what I know. Having 2meg of XMS memory requires that you use the A20 gate on your 8042. On alot of older clones this path doesn't work very well. And a recent Byte article says to switch to a newer date code part. This might help. Also, upgrade to the latest BIOS. In my case my 3 year DTK won't boot with their latest BIOS. So I am basically screwed. But if you can, get a hold of the Byte article, it gives plenty of advice ( none of which really worked for me ). Also after a crash from windows you need to run chkdsk. windows leaves lots of orphan blocks of your disk around when it crashes. One thing to try is running in real mode and configuring the entire XMS system as a cache. Not very satisfying, but it does work (at least for me). I use hyperdisk which is way better than that piece of junk SmartDrv. You can get a free evaluation copy from comupserve. Go DBASE and grep around for it. I forget exactly which library it is in. I personally am going to toss my DTK board and upgrade to a 386 mother board. The only question is which one. I am pretty tired of the continious stream of compatability problems from this board. In defense of DTK though, I have seen their new 286 AT boards and they completely redesigned it. So if you have a newer one maybe there is hope. eric -- ***************************************************************************** * Eric Parker, Megatest Corporation, * mail: ...sun!megatest!eparker * * 880 Fox Lane, San Jose, CA 95131 * telephone: (408)-437-9700 x3383 * *****************************************************************************