WIN2K Pro: why do some apps not start ? They stall!!!

[Dave]

I have recently installed WIN2K Pro on my PC and have noticed that programs such as Excel 97, Word 97, and several others SOMETIMES don't start properly, especially when the PC has been allowed to sit idle for a while. When I click on the program icon it appears that it is cranking, but then never fully starts ... but no error message or BSOD. - Like right now I started Excel 97 and after a minutet I got an Excel screen with the typical blank spreadsheet, but Task manager says that its "not responding" , and its not! Why?

It usually takes a restart to get things going again. Once these applications are running, no problems whatsoever.

I did an add/remove on Office 97 Professional (SP1) and reinstalled ... no difference.

BTW: I have a Soundblaster Live! card that has that damned popup menu task bar thingy ... but I got the updated WIN2K compatible progs from the CL website ... I think that I am going to remove it and see if it makes a difference.

Anyone else experiencing this "stalling" phenomena?

 

[Dave]

I beginning to think that this is a display driver problem ... I have an ATI All-in-Wonder (16MB) card ... the ATI site is pretty thin on WIN2K drivers for this hardware .... you evidently have to use the "Special Unsupported Beta don't ask us anything at all if you have a problem drivers" ... what the hell, I'm going for it!

 

[Dave]

Yup ... it was the ATI drivers .... everything works well now ... seems faster too ...

 

[Floyd]

I occasinally have the same problem under Win2k. In my case, it seems to be related to the Tekram DC-390U2W SCSI card. It has recently begun polling all of the SCSI devices indefinitely, so when I launch anything which requires drive letter access (i.e. File->Open), the application freezes for as much as five minutes. The operating system doesn't hang (just as in your case, apparently), I can still perform other tasks. This really sucks, because it renders Win2k virtually unusable.

The SCSI subsystem works wonderfully under Win98, so I know it isn't a hardware issue...<sheepishly> um, right? Check your Event Viewer (under Administrative Tools)to see if it points toward the problem. Mine indicates timeouts when accessing the SCSI card. Please let me know what you find, because this is getting on my nerves. I'm using the latest drivers and BIOS for the DC-390U2W, and have been for a few weeks yet the problem appeared two days ago. The only thing I've changed is added a LVD drive a week ago - the only LVD device on the system - and I think it worked OK for a few days although it wasn't used for much during that time.

I hope it's not that Win2k IRQ sharing rearing its ugly head. I've specified IRQ's for all of my devices in the mainboard BIOS, and they are applied accordingly in Win98. But Win2k places all of my major devices on IRQ 9 ... Tekram SCSI, Promise Ultra 66, Linksys NIC, ATI AIW 32MB Pro AGP video, and modem. That's just ridiculous, can you imagine the bandwidth these devices represent?

To this day, I cannot find a definitive answer on how Win2k's IRQ sharing actually works. Lots of speculation for sure, but no firm answers. Are all of my devices really on a single IRQ, or is Win2k just covering up what is really going on?

Dave, note that I'm using an ATI AIW as well, in case that's a common thread to our problems. I did install ATI's Win2k Multimedia Center beta recently. Then yesterday when I booted into Win2k, the ATI systray application loaded for the first time. Why now, after having booted into Win2k maybe 15 times since it was installed, I will never know. Something significant definitely happened, because VirtualDub now recognizes the video capture features of the card, whereas it didn't after the initial installation.

My Win2k has a twisted sense of humor, how about yours?

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Floyd]

Dave, you replied while I was composing my previous message. What did you do to fix it...download and install the latest Win2k driver from ATI? I believe that I am indeed running the latest but I'll go check in a moment to be sure. Likewise, have you installed the ATI Multimedia Center for your card?

If that does fix it, I won't know whether to be pissed or elated.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Dave]

Floyd:

I just installed the ATI drivers ... I just checked the Event Viewer and noticed several log entries that indicate that not all of the features are loading ... WDM something another ... related to the TV viewing feature (that I don't use anyhow)

I will have to poke around.

Overall things have improved immeasurably since I put the new drivers in ...

You DID give me another thing to think abou though: I have a ACER 310S scanner that has a dedicated ISA SCSI-like card. The card came with the scanner about 2.5 years ago, so its a real el-cheapo (total cost $100US). Even under WIN95/WIN98/WIN98SE the OS would &quot;lose touch&quot; with the scanner and I would have to restart in order to re-establish a connection with the scanner. I never did fix that. It was not much of a problem since I use the scanner infrequently. ALSO, I did download and install the new WIN2K drivers for the scanner (and the interface card). It seems to work perfectly now. More stuff to look at I suppose.

Overall, I really like WIN2K Pro. I also have the CDs for WIN2K Server and WIN2K Advanced Server. I'm thinking about messing with those in the days and weeks to come. Family and work are sure to slow me up, but hey, who needs sleep?

Thanks for the info.

 

[Dave]

Floyd ... are by chance a Golden Eagle? As in the Golden Eagles that punked the pachyderms of Alabama? I sure hope so, because I'm an Auburn Tiger. Although we're feeling low after having our 'nads mangled by both Bulldogs and Gators in the last 2 weeks, it gives us great comfort to know that an eagle of some type or another has given Mike Dumbo and his dumb boys a big fat L! - But really we love MD, we hope that he gets another nice big fat juicy contract extension and stays at Alabama for years and years and years.

 

[Floyd]

Hi Dave, thanks for the update. I just checked ATI's site and found that I am using the most recent drivers. I guess I'll have to try uninstalling the MultiMedia Center and see if that has anything to do with it...it is the only thing that conincides (time-wise) with the sudden problem with the SCSI subsystem. I remembered, however, that I have a version 635cd02 Win2k driver I downloaded from http://www.rageunderground.com last week, whereas the one posted at ATI is version 633cd18. I suppose it is a beta of a beta ??? Don't know whether I'll fool with it.

> &quot;Floyd ... are by chance a Golden Eagle? As in the Golden Eagles that punked the pachyderms of Alabama?&quot;

Yes, so happens I am, graduated from there a couple of years ago. They put a spanking on Tulane yesterday as well. Who's yo daddy?

> &quot;Family and work are sure to slow me up, but hey, who needs sleep?&quot;

Haha, that was my credo in college...&quot;There is EE in sleep, but no sleep in EE!&quot;

 

[Dave]

EE !!! Damn I knew it ... I be one o dem Shovel errr Civil Engineers (AU '84), but Dad (a Brit) is a ME ... his Dad was a CHe ... looks like my son Paul could be the one smart enuf to do the EE, I know I'm sure not!

I downloaded the new media center stuff but still have things in the event viewer like:

The WDM TVAudio (ATITVSnd) service failed to start due to the following error:
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

AND

The WDM Video Audio Crossbar (ATIXBar) service failed to start due to the following error:
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.


Thanks for the help.

 

[DiamondFire13]

I have been looking in my event viewer and everytime one of the programs stalls, it seems as though my soundcard (it actually says emu10k1) reports an error.

Well, if I figure it out, I will let you know,
Paul Hilgeman

 

[DiamondFire13]

So, I was just looking at my system properties, and my adaptec SCSI card is on IRQ 11 and so is my SB Live! How on earth do I change this or fix this? I will try disabling some things like serial and parallel since I dont use them. I will let you know how it goes, if you guys have any other ideas, by all means please let me know.

Paul Hilgeman

 

[Pauli]

Hey Dave,
I have this exact same problem - SOMETIMES but not always my Office 97 apps behave this way. They appear to stall for awhile and then they load and appear as NOT RESPONDING in Task Manager. They do eventually respond to mouse clicks, but it is painfully slow. Only Office 97 programs seem to exhibit this behavior, and if one is behaving this way, they all do (Word, Excel, Outlook, Access,...). Rebooting seems to fix the problem in most cases. The problem shows up about 10% of the time I boot this Win2K machine.

I did a reinstall of Office 97 with no improvement. I have not seen anything in the Event Viewer that indicates any problems. I do not have any SCSI devices or cards installed in this system. Office 97 has worked without problems for 2 years in Win98 on mostly the same hardware.

At this point, I am inclined to believe that there is a conflict between one of the Office 97 shared DLL files and Win2K system files, but I checked MSDN knowledge base and couldn't find anything. Also, there is no explanation as to why this is happening only sometimes and not every time Win2K is running.

I'll let you know if I can figure anything out with this problem. It's comforting to know that this is not related to my unique system configuration. Perhaps MS will post a fix for it.

 

[Floyd]

> &quot;I be one o dem Shovel errr Civil Engineers&quot;

LOL! I like that, don't take yourself too seriously, eh?

I'm still completely baffled as to why my Win2k is behaving this way. I've cleanly undone every software &amp; hardware change that has been made in the last week, performed a Win2k repair, changed drivers - still the SCSI subsystem will not function. Again, it is working just dandy in Win98.

Let me say that I think the frequent recommendations to &quot;format and reinstall the OS&quot; are nonsense, but I do believe I have reached the breaking point. I've had a single Win98 (first edition) installation for over a year and a half, and have never encountered a problem I couldn't resolve. And I believe it's far more beneficial to stick it out and find the source of the problem because it will assuredly resurface sometime in the future. But there have been too many hours wasted with this damned troubleshooting. Fortunately it won't be too terribly painful to reinstall Win2k, but this time I'm going to try my luck without ACPI. I will also be more religious with creating periodic ERD's and partition images. On several occasions I've read something to the effect of &quot;When Win2k works, it's great. But when it doesn't, it's positively horrific.&quot; Seems we all must learn the hard way.

Thanks for enduring my rant.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Dave]

Pauli: I'm sure that you have already tried it, but the installation of the new ATI drivers seems to correlate with the problem disappearing completely. We're having beatiful weather here in LA (thats Lower Alabama for all those folks in Rio Linda). If you have the time, &quot;strip her down to her knickers&quot; (=generic vid card, known reliable ram, no sound etc.), do a clean install and watch for misbehavior. I would take nothing for granted ... It took me about three days to figure out that a piece of RAM that was &quot;known good&quot; had actually gone south in a very subtle manner. Paranoia is the only policy. Swap pieces around and watch for problems/changes. This is very time consuming but is usually the only way to get it all straight. Once you do, burn an image of the OS and tuck away somewhere safe.

Floyd: Man, anything over a year is mightly long in the tooth for a WIN9X OS ... Yes, that is bullshit! ... but then its almost always a dll issue isn't it? ... We chase the dam things around constantly. App developers obviously can't be expected to respect the OS dlls ... they always seem to want to replace the factory (MS) original with their own &quot;new, whiter, brighter, mo' better, faster&quot; version ... that invariably has bugs galore and exhibits bizzare behavior that is almost impossible to decipher. When you ask them about it, they say: &quot;never seen 'dat before!&quot; ... Of course the bloody hell you haven't ace ... because you didn't GD well subject your SW to exhau$tive te$ting before you sold. HOWEVER: its about damn time that MS has come up with an OS like WIN2k that actually has some defense in depth against the pillaging of dlls ... WAY overdue. Why things like this were left to the good graces of SW developers, I'll never understand. THIS CONCLUDES RANT NUMBER 3.14159

Go ahead and while away a day or two doing a clean install .. then make make a ghost image on a bootable CD (or set of CDs) ... that way the restore process is just another excuse to dring a cold beverage and watch the pretty drive lights blink! Better yet, image to a second drive. Truly, you will then have no fear from the ill effects of promiscuous HW and SW installs.

Later ... got to tend to the laptop ... WIN2K install just choked like a dawg on chicken bone ... it looks like its going to be another long night.

 

[Dave]

DiamondFire13:

I just checked my IRQ usage ... ATI 128GL, the cable modem NIC (3COM 10/100), the internal network NIC (Intel 10/100), SB Live! and the Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to Univerasl Host Controller all seem to be on IRQ 11 !!! NO PROBLEMS!!!

I have read in the Forums that WIN2k is supposed to be a virtuoso at sharing IRQs ... I think that I believe it!

the more I see of this Os the more I like it ... I think that this kind of robustness could presage an eventual comeback in the MSFT stock price.

Later

 

[Floyd]

> &quot;but then its almost always a dll issue isn't it? HOWEVER: its about damn time that MS has come up with an OS like WIN2k that actually has some defense in depth against the pillaging of dlls &quot;

I dunno, I don't think it is simply (assuming there is such a thing) a DLL issue. Assuming it were, I would expect the Win2k repair process to restore them. Additionally, I log all software installations and review any system files they replace. Nothing notable since the onset of this problem. I don't install anything questionable in Win2k because I know the hell it can produce. Only well-established apps ever touch the Win2k partition...I use Win98 as my crapper, so to speak. Virtually all new software is installed first in Win98 (and, curiously, it is still chugging along beautifully). Of course I understand that they are two distinct OS's, but it is a good general safeguard.

As a last ditch effort, I am downloading Service Pack 1 at this very moment despite the fact I see no related issues in the listing of fixed issues. If it fixes it, I'll be elated...and if it FUBAR's the installation, big deal, I've resigned to do a clean install anyway. The download will take several hours on this dialup connection. MS hides the URL for their downloads with Javascript, but fortunately it can be found in the HTML source code so I could insert it into Go!Zilla. That way if my connection is dropped or the machine crashes in the next eight hours - both of which are possible - I'll be able to resume the download.

> &quot;make make a ghost image on a bootable CD (or set of CDs) ... that way the restore process is just another excuse to drink a cold beverage and watch the pretty drive lights blink! &quot;

On that we certainly agree. I hadn't bothered to image Win2k lately because it is not my primary OS, and frankly I decided I would try it without ACPI if ever the need arose to reinstall.

> &quot;I have read in the Forums that WIN2k is supposed to be a virtuoso at sharing IRQs ... I think that I believe it!&quot;

Well, I think that Win2k's implementation of IRQ sharing works well. Or at least it hasn't been proven not to work. Mine seemingly worked fine for several months sharing my video, SCSI, IDE controller, modem, and NIC on IRQ 9. I did notice that my soundcard would distort its output while scrolling or dragging windows around, whereas it does not in Win98. And I know quite a few people have had trouble with NIC's sharing IRQ's with pretty much anything. Besides, I don't feel IRQ sharing is necessary if all of the same hardware works great under Win98 where the IRQ's are assigned in the mainboard BIOS. Personally, I think it's just one less thing I'll have to worry or second-guess myself about.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[TomBilliodeaux]

Ram?
I had similar problems that were due to improper Bios setting: RAS-CAS timing that caused W2k to suddenly stop or shutdown.
Changed setting from 2 to 3. Problem stopped.
This was confirmed by repeating after a reinstall.

ABit SE6, P733@133, Mushkin HSDRAM 128mb(4.6ns),CAS2 2,3,2 setting with RAS-CAS timing (Row,Column memory sync timing) set to 3.
Plain system using on board (815e) video and audio.

 

[AfterBurn]

Floyd: Try using the built in Symbios drivers, instead of the Tekram ones for your SCSI card. I have the same card, and i have found the MS generic drivers to work perfectly, something i cant say about the Tekram drivers. Love the card though.

Dave &amp; other w/ Office 97: Have you downloaded and installed the compatibility updates for W2K from Microsoft? One of them is to assure/correct problems with Office 97.

SBLive! owners: I have found the SBLive! dont like sharing of IRQ's and i dont mean within W2K, but hardware IRQ's in your BIOS. Check your mobo manuals to see which PCI slots share the same IRQ line, and see which which card(s) thus share with the SBLive!. If you have the free PCI slots, try juggling them around so the Live! doesnt have to share a IRQ line with a different slot. IMO this is not a W2K prob, but Creative not following PCI 2.1 specs..

Hope anyone can do something with this.

 

[Floyd]

Hi Afterburn, I had tried reverting to the default Symbios drivers but the problem remains. I also applied the service pack since my last post, and the same scenario. Failing these final possibilities, I've already formatted the partition for a reinstallation. Now I just have to find the command for preventing ACPI from being installed. A quick Google search said I'm supposed to hit F5 when setup reports &quot;Inspecting System Configuration&quot;, but it flew right by and started loading drivers. Headed to the MS knowledgebase right now...

[edit] According to MS, press F7 when setup displays &quot;Press F6 to load additional drivers&quot;. I'll let you know how it turns out, I'm not expecting miracles. [/edit]

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Floyd]

Well, reinstallation was a complete waste of time. I can honestly say this is the most bizzare problem I have ever seen, even moreso than the recent instance of my video card corrupting the soundcard's output (despite no resource or IRQ conflicts). Since reinstalling Win2k didn't change a thing, it must be a hardware issue, right? Heh, beats me...Win98 has no problems with the config. Now's time to strip the computer down to its bare ass and try it piece by piece. Ugh.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Pauli]

Hey Floyd,

Not likely to be a hardware issue because we all have different hardware specs and are all having the same problem. I still believe there is a common DLL that all of the Office 97 apps use that is causing the problem. Why else would the problem occur ONLY with Office 97 programs? On my system, no other programs seem to have this problem and no one else has reported the problem with anything but Office 97 apps. I think you are wasting your time trying to isolate a particular piece of hardware. Maybe it's a Microsoft conspiracy to get everyone to upgrade to Office 2000

Anyway, I just installed the Windows Update compatibility upgrade last night. So far, the problem has not occurred, but I will monitor for the next few days and keep everyone on this thread informed. Good Luck.

 

[Floyd]

Pauli, I agree, I don't think it can be a hardware problem either. However, the problem is there after a clean installation, and I never had MS Office on the original installation. All the same hardware worked fine for several weeks, since the last SCSI device was added. None of this makes any sense.

If it isn't a hardware issue, the only explanation I can imagine is that Windows 2000 has a different way of querying the SCSI subsystem than Win98. Seems highly unlikely, even ridiculous, but at this point what other recourse do I have? I'm open to any suggestions.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Pauli]

Some more observations here:
The compatibility update apparently did not fix the problem because it happened again last night.
However, an interesting thing occurred. It was Excel that was pausing. So I got pissed and started to do a Reboot from the Start menu. The Reboot operation did not work properly (apparently because Excel was not responding) but when the reboot request came back, Excel allowed me to Exit it and THEN all of the Office 97 apps worked fine(Win2K did not shut down)! I can't remember exactly what the screen showed, but I will try this again next time it happens.

 

[AfterBurn]

Getting a brainwave here. Do you have fastfind running at start-up? Or other office related programs. Office 97 has a couple it loads.

if you have fastfind starting up, disable it. W2K uses indexing service for the same. Other office stuff you dont need that gets started, disable and then see if it still acts up