thanks Harry & Brad & Ivan i am not a big fan of reinstalling, but will try *after* running memtest
Fritz, i use the clipboard CONSTANTLY w/o other problems in other apps
For what it is worth the nature of the 'scrambling' was a bunch of traces and via mysteriously moved or duplicated on top of other stuff
ahh, and the board had been 'done' when i was just polishing it up when this all happened
thank god for the nightly automated backups
Dennis Saputelli
PS i am reminded of a quip years ago by Ethan Winer: "if you don't crash at least twice a day you are not working hard enough"
_______________________________________________________________________ Integrated Controls, Inc. Tel: 415-647-0480 EXT 107 2851 21st Street Fax: 415-647-3003 San Francisco, CA 94110 www.integratedcontrolsinc.com
Harry Selfridge wrote:
Hi Dennis,
Based on your description, I would be suspicious of a possible memory problem. With graphic intensive programs, you sometimes see the "last straw" failure. Everything works until you add just one more thing, and then you see the crash.
I would first run a RAM test. If that is OK, I'd move on to a through disk scan. If RAM has a problem, I'd replace the bad RAM, test it, and then do a thorough disk scan.
My reasoning is this - the system going into limbo can be many things, but frequently happens because of either corruption of a process running in RAM or repeated seeking in virtual memory (hard disk). Combined with the fact that your file is scrambled afterward, it seems likely you have either a hardware RAM problem or a virtual RAM (hard drive) problem.
It would be worthwhile, if your failing box hasn't been open in a long time, to open it and reseat (unplug and replug) the hard drive cables. When a bit coming from the hard drive glitches, Windows will retry the read. These retries are not reported directly to the user unless there is total failure, but they do appear as long pauses during the disk operation. If a bit glitches writing to the drive, you get garbage in your files, and you may see retries when the operating system tries to read the bad file. Glitches like these can be caused by something as simple as a resistive connection caused by light surface corrosion of the connector contacts. Unplugging and replugging will wipe the corrosion film off, and reestablish continuity.
There are obviously many more possibilities for your difficulties, but if it were me, I would seek reassurance that the hardware is OK before looking for something more exotic.
Regards - Harry
At 07:41 AM 5/9/05, you wrote:
hi all
i have 99SE on 3 different boxes, all pretty similar, all WIN2K
on one machine i am getting a pretty consistent & serious problem, but not on the others
i have a part (PCB component) which is a pin 1 indicator
it is a triangle made of 6 or so tracks all on the top overlay
(there are no other 'normal' PCB primitives such as pads)
on this one box, quite consistently when i copy one of these to the clipboard and paste it around on the SECOND (somethimes third) paste operation i get the hour glass and protel has gone into la la land
i waited almost 30 mins for it to recover (i have seen it recover from some 'crashes') but it would not
during the protel 'hour glass' crash i noted 100% CPU usage in taskman
after rebooting my board was pretty scrambled and of course all unsaved work was lost
so not to let this go i repeated the operation, this after a fresh boot, and bang, crashed again exactly as before on the second paste
rebooted again and decided not to paste that thing around anymore :)
then i grabbed a mounting hole (component) and pasted it and on the first paste i was crashed again
went to my other boxes and could not reproduce the problem with the same board, same component and same operations
any ideas ?
Dennis Saputelli
_______________________________________________________________________ Integrated Controls, Inc. Tel: 415-647-0480 EXT 107 2851 21st Street Fax: 415-647-3003 San Francisco, CA 94110 www.integratedcontrolsinc.com
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