System Lockup Under WordXP / WinXP

[Poxnor 0]

Heyo,

 

I'm trying to help a friend, who's computer has a rather persistent problem that I cannot figure out.

 

When running Word XP (Under Win XP), sometimes the computer entirely locks up. While I am typing, occassionally, the top half of the cursor will have moved to the right to reveal the top half of the next letter I typed, but the bottom half of the cursor will not have moved, and the bottom half of the next letter I typed will not have appeared. The system is completely unresponsive -- with a complete mouse and keyboard lockout (pressing num Lock doesn't even toggle the light on the keyboard).

 

I thought that this may have been a video driver issue, so I went to the website of the company that makes the motherboard (as the video chip is integrated onto the motherboard on this computer) and I downloaded the most recent driver. Unfortunately, there was no WinXP driver available, so I downloaded the Win2k driver, and it loaded fine. However, I received the the same problem with both the WinXP default driver that was loaded on WinXP install, and with the new Win2k driver.

 

The same problem occurred under both Word 2000 and Word XP (I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, even with a different version of Office), but to no avail.

 

All the latest WinXP updates from WindowsUpdate have also been installed, as well as Office XP SP1.

 

If anyone has any suggestions as to what may be a cause of this, I would be very grateful for their feedback

 

I've provided what I can recall of my friend's system specs below, along with some comments. Unfortunately, my friend got suckered into buying some pre-packaged system, and I cannot even open her case without voiding her warrenty <grumble>

 

But anyhow, here they are, with some comments attached:

 

PS. I don't know if it's important, but this computer runs like a bloody dump truck...it tends to lag and be generally choppy. It isn't exactly the fastest computer in the world (Celey 600, 256 Meg RAM), but even my mother's computer (PIII 450, 192 Megs RAM) runs faster / smoother than my friend's. Does anyone else find this odd?

 

- Celeron 600

- S741-LMR Motherboard is written on the box, and I presume that this means there's an Amptron PII-3741LMR motherboard inside, as that's the closest match to the name I could find anywhere, and the specs seem to match

http://www.amptron.com/html/m741lmr.html

- Integrated SIS 620 Video

- Integrated Sound

- ACPI is turned off on the computer

/* Would reinstalling WinXP w/ACPI support maybe help solve this problem? I've heard ACPI is notorious for both helping with and/or causing problems */

That's about all I can think of for now. But if anyone would like any more information, or could offer any assistance, please do not hesitate to ask me -- I would greatly appreciate any feedback I could get. Thanks =)

[ThC 129 0]

the problem sounds like a processor/ram/video issue. I would try loading another OS on there ME/2k/98se whatever and see if it still happens. In my opinion your friend shouldnt try running XP on a system such as his because it will lead to the problem your having, lockups. Not being there im guessing that what is happening is that the processor can't keep up with the requests that the OS is making, thus causing page fault upon page fault locking up the system. I mean a Celeron 600 only runs on a 60mHZ bus so its going to be slow as hell. You can either try adding RAM, to the box or go back to an OS that isnt as system intense as XP.

[Poxnor 0]

Thanks for your feedback

It's very much appreciated!

 

The odd thing is, Excel runs fine...so I'm not too sure if this is a matter of OS intensity. It would be odd to have one program running fine, and it's practical equal to be occassionally locking up the entire computer?

 

Just out of curiousity, though, could you describe to me what a page fault is? I've heard the term many times, but I'm not sure exactly what it entails. Thank you very much

 

--Poxnor

[ThC 129 0]

ok now thats wierd, having excel run and not word...

 

A page fault is when a program tries to access RAM or the page file and the area is already taken. What in turn happens is that say word needs a memory address but oh ICQ is taking that up, windows tries to write to that specific address then finds out its taken, and just dumps the information. In 9x this usually results in a Blue Screen of Death. In NT it usually just closes up the program and gives you an error message.