duvalj@bionette.cgrb.orst.edu (Joe Duval - Entomology) (07/26/90)
Hi, The software: Word 5.0 The machine: on a 286 DTK machine, EAGLE II VGA BIOS, Dexxa mouse, w/disk manager partitions C:=1M, D:=39M. There are over 180 files in the root directory on D:. (I didn't do it and I suspect this may be part of the problem But I thought I'd check around first.) The problem: When spell checking a file (more consistent with large files but has occured with 1 1/2 page document) the machine will happily chunk away for a while and then will crash. By crashing I mean: "File or directory does not exist" and then "Access to this file is required. Enter Y to retry or Q to quit and lose changes" messages will appear on the bottom of the screen. If you press Y the same message will come back. IF you press Q, Word is killed and you are returned to the DOS prompt. In the few tests I have tried I loaded the standard dictionary into word. If I started from the root directory on drive D: (see above), the spell checker will fail. If, with the same file, I start WORD from its directory, the spell checker will work fine. There are no other sub-directories, YET!!! Other times this happens: I have created a small (1 1/2) page document and when spell checking finds a bad word, I try to add it to the standard dictionary. At that time I get the same messages above. Again this is from the root directory on D:. This machine is used primarily for Word processing. In fact I don't think it is used for anything else. There is only one user (other than me when problems arise) and she is not into hard disk management, specifically directories. I suspect the amount of files in her root directory is the problem but I don't know if there is an upper limit. Is there in DOS? Does Disk Manager change this? Thanks for any help -Joe