Windows Screwup

[imported_earlh]

Folks,

So here is the issue. When I open "too many" programs under Windows, I stop being able to open programs. Or they will open, and some of the subwindows will fail to create (most often the menubar.) This most often happens with ie. picture number 0

With firefox, various windows will fail to create; most often the main window. picture number 2. This is with 10 copies of ie, a couple other apps, and 6 firefox windows open. I loaded anandtech but nothing displays because the main window failed to create. I also clicked on file in the menubar but the menu doesn't appear. See that the main window is grey instead of white as it ought to be.

Other programs, such as mspaint, will simply not open and sound the generic "system beep." I also lose the ability to display, or to display submenus, on the start menu. Or to see the alt-tab dialog box.

I have no idea what is wrong. I've checked the event viewer and nothing shows up. The laptop has plenty of free memory and free disk space. I've run adaware and not found anything, and the issue happens with programs besides ie. Any suggestions? This happened under SP1 and happens under SP2. Also, this behaviour is unaffected by how long the computer has been up; I can open enough programs and trigger this right after rebooting if I wish.

This occurs with ~20,000 handles, 600 threads and 70 processes; there is >200MB of free physical memory. IOW, the system is not being pushed.

Laptop:
Dell 600m running WinXP Home SP2, installed by Dell
512MB RAM
768 MB swap file
10GB free disk space
1 user

Thanks.

earl

 

[talyn00]

I'm not sure if this helps, but I might try increasing the size of the pagefile. And why start so many Firefox windows? I'd just start using tabs in Firefox

 

[MrChad]

Have you manually adjusted your virtual memory settings? If so, change it so that Windows manages your settings and see if the problem still occurs. Make sure you have the latest video card drivers from Dell installed.

 

[imported_earlh]

I opened the firefox windows just because it was a quick way to demonstrate the failure.

As for the pagefile, I'll try but I'm dubious: the commit charge the last time this happened was only at 447/1250.

Thanks,

earl

 

[imported_earlh]

MrChad:

I forgot to mention that this laptop (unfortunately) has an ATI card -- a Mobility Radeon 9000. I did just update the drivers last week to the most recent version available from Dell, dated 6/10/2004. I've also tried disabling hardware acceleration and besides making video playback suck, it didn't help

Thanks,

earl

 

[MrChad]

I had a strange issue very similar to this happen to me on a Dell workstation (Dual Xeon rig) with an ATI FireGL card. Turns out it was a bad motherboard.

You might want to check out Dell's message boards to see if other 600M users are having this problem.

 

[imported_earlh]

Thanks for all your help. I'll check Dell's forums tonight.

If I can't get this fixed with you all's help, I'll eventually have to go through Dell's support. Unfortunately, I just *know* they'll insist I wipe and reinstall windows. Sigh.

earl