keating@rex.cs.tulane.edu (John W. Keating) (11/02/90)
Lately (within the past three days) I've noticed a tendency of windows
to freeze up during use of applications that had never given me trouble
before. For example, I was playing with almanac today, and the system
just froze. (Actually, I did have mouse movement, so it wasn't totally
frozen.) A three-fingered salute fixed me, and I went my merry way.
Yesterday, while using WinQVT, I had what appeared to be the same
problem. It was different, however, in that occasionally, the
title bar would blink, as if I had changed from one app and then back
to it.
I don't do any programming with Windows, but if it uses messge passing
in much the same way that PM does, I'd be guessing that the Message
Queue is getting blocked somehow. This seems a bit odd, however, as these
were the only programs running at the time. (Besides the program manager.)
I have tried using a virus scanning program, and haven't come up with
anything. I did have the Curses program installed for about a week,
however. Does anyone know if the trojan that this is reported (I didn't
say it had one!) to have could cause this?
Any info would be appreciated!
John Keatingchaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Chaim Dworkin) (11/03/90)
Well, this is very interesting. I just logged in to post a question about a problem and someone else has just described the same problem. The problem is that periodically Win3 just hangs. It doesn't seem to be related to any specific program I'm running at the time and it occurs when I'm running a single task. I have win3 running on a home made 8 Mhz 286 with 2 Mb RAM. The hangups don't happen very frequently so it's just a minor annoyance but they do happen. The only time the hangups happen with any regularity is if I try to run DateBook, which I've since deleted, or if I click on the special options bar in Ami Professional. Otherwise they occur randomly every few days. Any ideas on what I can check in my .ini files? -- Chaim Dworkin (chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu)
rb9a@watt.acc.Virginia.EDU (Raul Baragiola) (11/03/90)
In article <32181@netnews.upenn.edu> chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Chaim Dworkin) writes: >Well, this is very interesting. I just logged in to post a question >about a problem and someone else has just described the same problem. >The problem is that periodically Win3 just hangs. It doesn't seem to be >related to any specific program I'm running at the time and it occurs >when I'm running a single task. I have win3 running on a home made >8 Mhz 286 with 2 Mb RAM. The hangups don't happen very frequently >so it's just a minor annoyance but they do happen. The only time >the hangups happen with any regularity is if I try to run DateBook, which >I've since deleted, or if I click on the special options bar in Ami >Professional. Otherwise they occur randomly every few days. > >Any ideas on what I can check in my .ini files? > > >-- >Chaim Dworkin (chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu) In my case I believe I traced the problems to bad or marginal sectors, particularly in the swap file. I know that Windows have problems with some SCSI controllers when you want to use a *permanent* swapfile. It seems it uses its own routines to access the disk. It would be very useful if someone would post information about this topic. Cheers, Raul Raul A. Baragiola \Internet: raul@virginia.edu Dept. Nuclear Engnr. and Engnr. Physics \Phone: (804)-982-2907 University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22901 \ Fax: (804)-924-6270
cave@randvax.UUCP (Jonathan Cave) (11/04/90)
Say, I'm glad others have been having this problem. For me it happens with particular regularity in Excel: ask for a recalc, get a permanent (up to 3-fingered salute) hourglass instead. But it also happens in other apps. Two possible "causes" in my case: PC-NFS, and (based on recent traffic here) curse.exe. Is there a pattern?
chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Chaim Dworkin) (11/06/90)
I just called Samna to discuss the occasional freeze-ups I've been having in particular with their product, Ami Professional. They made some suggestions which are very obvious but I'll post them here anyway. First, check your hard drive(s) to make absolutely sure there is only one file named win.ini anywhere. If you keep a backup of the win.ini on the hard drive it should be renamed. Second, take out all device drivers from both config.sys and autoexec.bat except for himem.sys and ontrack's dmdrvr (if you need it) and see if windows freezes. Even remove the mouse driver and your files= and buffers= statements. Then put things back one at a time until the freeze-ups start again. Those are pretty basic and obvious suggestions but we occasionally forget to do them. -- Chaim Dworkin (chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu)
mark@infolog.se (Mark Plotnick) (11/08/90)
In article <32181@netnews.upenn.edu> chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Chaim Dworkin) writes: >Well, this is very interesting. I just logged in to post a question >about a problem and someone else has just described the same problem. >The problem is that periodically Win3 just hangs. It doesn't seem to be >related to any specific program I'm running at the time and it occurs >when I'm running a single task. I have win3 running on a home made >8 Mhz 286 with 2 Mb RAM. The hangups don't happen very frequently >so it's just a minor annoyance but they do happen. The only time >the hangups happen with any regularity is if I try to run DateBook, which >I've since deleted, or if I click on the special options bar in Ami >Professional. Otherwise they occur randomly every few days. > >Any ideas on what I can check in my .ini files? > > >-- >Chaim Dworkin (chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: PROBLEM: Windows has lately started freezing up. Summary: Expires: References: <4787@rex.cs.tulane.edu> <32181@netnews.upenn.edu> Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: Infologics, Sollentuna, Sweden Keywords: PROBLEM FREEZE COLD ICE BRRR ANTARCTICA MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS In article <32181@netnews.upenn.edu> chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Chaim Dworkin) writes: >Well, this is very interesting. I just logged in to post a question >about a problem and someone else has just described the same problem. >The problem is that periodically Win3 just hangs. It doesn't seem to be >................................................................ I encountered similar symptoms. In my case the problem was a not quite compatible Extended Memory board. I`m running a Compaq Deskpro 286/12Mhz, and the Memory card was a BocaRam/AT with 4MB. Win3 ran OK with smaller applications but anything that required larger data transfers (Toolbook for example), would freeze windows. I swapped the extended memory board with a somewhat newer one and everything seems OK now. Mark Plotnick, mark@infolog.se Box 91, 191 22 Sollentuna SWEDEN
burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton) (11/09/90)
In article <2789@randvax.UUCP> cave@rand-unix.UUCP (Jonathan Cave) writes: >Say, I'm glad others have been having this problem. For me it happens >with particular regularity in Excel: ask for a recalc, get a permanent >(up to 3-fingered salute) hourglass instead. But it also happens in >other apps. Two possible "causes" in my case: PC-NFS, and (based on recent >traffic here) curse.exe. Is there a pattern? Wow !!! I have similar freezeup problems on my true-blue IBM PC AT. (yeah, I'm getting a 386 Real Soon Now.) My freezeups are so intermittent that it's hard to reproduce the problem. Funny part is that they happen even in DOS. Symptoms are mouse clicks and keystrokes not taking effect. But the mouse arrow still moves (say in MS Word 4.0) and I can still reboot from the keyboard. Any suggestions? I feel encouraged by the other postings to post a more detailed description of my system hardware and configuration, complete with config.sys and autoexec.bat files. --Phil Burton-- --Unisys (nee Convergent Technologies)
kevinc@cs.athabascau.ca (Kevin Crocker) (11/12/90)
I've encountered the same kinds of problems. [386/33 w phoenix bios]
Apparently and randomly Win3 just hangs -- sometimes when all I've
got running is File Manager. I've also been getting my groups
corrupted quite a bit. I've checked fro viruses using f-prot and a
collegue who has mcAffe's stuff checked also. Nothing showed up. I
haven't rec'd the upgrade to 3.1 yet have some of these problems been
cured in the upgrade????
Kevin
--
Kevin "auric" Crocker Athabasca University
UUCP: ...!{alberta,ncc}!atha!kevinc
Inet: kevinc@cs.AthabascaU.CAbaldy@micor.UUCP (Andre Sastre) (11/14/90)
In article <1666@mitisft.Convergent.COM> burton@mitisft.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE) writes: >In article <2789@randvax.UUCP> cave@rand-unix.UUCP (Jonathan Cave) writes: >>Say, I'm glad others have been having this problem. For me it happens >>with particular regularity in Excel: ask for a recalc, get a permanent >>(up to 3-fingered salute) hourglass instead. But it also happens in >>other apps. Two possible "causes" in my case: PC-NFS, and (based on recent >>traffic here) curse.exe. Is there a pattern? > >Wow !!! I have similar freezeup problems on my true-blue IBM PC AT. (yeah, >I'm getting a 386 Real Soon Now.) My freezeups are so intermittent that it's >hard to reproduce the problem. Funny part is that they happen even in DOS. > >Symptoms are mouse clicks and keystrokes not taking effect. But the mouse >arrow still moves (say in MS Word 4.0) and I can still reboot from the keyboard. Maybe what you need is a stacks command in your config.sys. According to the Windows 3.0 manual, if you use MS DOS 3.3 or later, you must have stacks=0,0 in your config.sys. And, according to PC Magazine's DOS manual (I forget the exact name - the very big black book), there is a bug in MS DOS 3.2 and you have to put a customized stacks statement into your config. Not sure exactly what the settings would be, but you can check into this yourself if you have DOS 3.2. -- Donna Hogan uucp: nrcaer!cunews!micor!baldy internet: cunews!micor!baldy@nrcaer.UUCP =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=