unresolved computer crash mystery...

[Amaan]

Hi

I have a PIII based system that crashes with basic operating system operations. Symptoms under Win2k/WinNT:

1) Using Windows Explorer to copy or move files will crash Explorer.exe, and launch DrWatson32.exe, and then explorer.exe starts again.

2) Opening too many applications (say Outlook and Photoshop and 2 or 3 browsing windows) crashes Explorer along with a couple of the currently opened apps and launches DrWatson32.exe

I am using Windows 2k Pro. I had the same problem with Win NT SP6a. Ironically, all works perfectly well under Win 98! If I use another file-browsing software, like ACDsee browser to copy/move files, all works perfectly well under WinNT/Win2k!

On Win NT, just after crashing I would get an error mesg "File System Error (1026)"...On Win2k, it doesn't bother giving an error msg at all. Just crashes.

If I open huge files in Photoshop, after a while it gives me a msg "Error writing to drive. Sorry this error is fatal", and then crashes and launches drwatson32.exe

I have an Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard (with latest BIOS), 256 MB PC100 memory, Pentium III 500MHz (Slot 1), and Quantum Fireball lct.13 13Gig HDD.

And here's the strangest thing of them all. I have seen this bug on 3 different machines. All crash the same way. The machine where I used to work (an Acer system), the machine at home, and the machine where I work now!!! I am now beginning to think that it's me who causes the crash, coz in over a year I have not been able to solve it, and nobody seems to have heard about this symptom, and even if I shift countries and computers, I still get the same problem

Twice I have tried chaning Hard drives (from Quantum to Seagate). No luck.
I reinstalled win 2k pro. worked fine for 2 weeks. but then started crashing again.

I have almost given up. Am about to order new Mushkin memory, as that may solve the problem.

anybody out there who has a fix for this?

amaan

 

[Slikkster]

Well, in some sense, it just may be you or your actions. Let me explain:
Are you doing anything to customize Windows 2000 from it's defaults? For example, are you limiting Temporary Internet File space from defaults? Doing anything to otherwise change the default settings of the operating system? Here's some info from Microsoft on the File System Error you've experienced:

MS Knowledge Base Article #1

and

MS Knowledge Base Article #2

Additionally, what about your swapfile? Have you manually set it to a certain size vs. letting Win2K dynamically size it? Is it on the same partition as your operating system's files?