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Win2K crashes randomly in Office apps

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by tekster537

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I am working with 2 PC's that are having the same problem. I found this article titled "When doing a save as, it freezes", from user Joepup. My problem is this:

PC info: Dell Optiplex GS240 P4 256 memory 32 MB ATI graphics card plenty of h.d. Space running Windows 2000 SP3 Office 2000 SP2. When in Outlook or any other Office suit application and I do a save as/open the whole computer freezes up and a reboot. This does not happen all the time and it does not matter if I'm saving to the network or locally.
The problem happens when using the drop down menu to change drive locations.
The user first noticed the problem after a CD RW (NEC 7900a) from another Dell OptiPlex was swapped with the old. I have tried everything I can think of. Currently the drive has been unplugged totally to see if this is the problem. I am at the point where a BIOS flash or firmware flash is probably the next step. In BIOS I believe that it is seeing this CD ROM device as a hard drive and possibly creating random freezing. Has anyone encountered this problem. I have been trying to find an email address to user Joepup, b/c after researching his history, he two asked for directions on swapping a CD ROM drive but I can't find any solutions.

Thanks for your time!

10 replies

by demuxer

I suggest you first:

Go to My Comp/propierties /Advanced/ Startup and Recovery and uncheck [automatically reboot] then you can wait another message or try Ctrl+Alt+Del to see nonresponding process/apps

Also, try to log another "LOCAL"user and check if you get the same problem using office.

im waiting your answers.

by tekster537

This has already been done. I must do a hard restart before un-freezing. I am assuming this has something to do with the pc browsing the CD ROM like a floppy and getting hung up when it thinks the CD ROM is a hard drive? Ever heard of anything like that?

by acattr

last time this happened to me, I had a permissions problem with the path to "MY Documents" Try changing the MY documents path to some other folder, preferbably on the c:\MYDocs, check the permissions on that folder to make sure user has full control over this new folder. If no more crashing, then check the permissions on the old "My Documents" folder.

by tekster537

The user has full control. Most of the time this occurs when browsing for a network drive using the drop down menu. However this problem is random. And I don't think related to MS apps. The user has it the most in office but others as well.

by jeremy the it guy

Well, this is only a start so bear with me. I'd first try to fix the BIOS issue. If a CD-ROM is being percieved as a Hard Drive, that is a huge issue and should be taken care of. That should be done by going into the BIOS and specifying that drive as a CD-ROM (If the automatically detect isn't working properly) or set to automatically detect. The second thing I'd do is to to your task manager and see what's going on in there. The reason this is happening to you is that some process is taking up 100% of the CPU and it's locking the machine up. This can be hardware related or software related. I'd make sure that you don't have any software running in the background that you don't need. Virus scanners are notorious for that because they scan constantly. Let's start there and tell me what you get. Also, check your Event Viewer to look for Save Dumps and Memory Dumps and all errors. Email me at jwhitlock@starprecision.com if you'd like. Thanks, Jeremy

by tekster537

Thanks for your suggestions. After discussion with a GOOD dell tech, we have narrowed down the problem to one of two things. Either a problem with Roxio Easy CD creator, I reinstalled, applied the suggested patch for 5.0 & flashed the firmware onthe CD RW drive. So far everything is working better. FYI: no memmory dumps in TM, or anything in EV.

by dipthis

The challenge I encountered was the "random" nature - but the drive change kept leading back to the "what else was changed?" question. The anti-virus software settings finally surfaced as our cuprit. When the AV was set to scan only for file Open (not copy or close) and the CD RW excluded from the 'drives to scan' option, our mystery lock up problem went away.

by tekster537

Thanks for the suggestion. See above. As of right now the problem is related to Roxio 5.0

by tekster537

Also on unistall/reinstall of Roxio 5.0, the patch, and disabling Direct CD. The problem has not reappeared yet. I am leaving this open, b/c of new light on the issue. I will post more info if the issue reappears.

Thanks!

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