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System Crash Problem - Driver Related(?)

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by 1.e.f.allwein.1

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I have a machine that crashes when using scroll bars or resizing the window (moving borders) of Outlook Express (v5.50.4522.1200), and sometimes, Internet Explorer (v5050.4522.1800). This is a 'hard' crash with total system lock-up, requiring 'pulling the plug' - Ctrl+Alt+Del has no effect.

After extensive analysis utilizing msconfig, I was able to ascertain that the problem is related to the "driver pnpdrvr.drv" line in system.ini, which is called up by the [boot] section of system.ini.If this driver is removed from the system by removing the check mark in front of the line: "display.drv=pnpdrvr.drv" in System.ini in msconfig, and rebooting, there is no longer a problem. Unfortunately without this driver the only resolution available is 640x480.

Incidentally, a search indicates there is no "display.drv" or "pnpdrvr.drv" on the machine, which I found interesting. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in this area to sort this out.

I would sincerely appreciate any guidanceto solve this problem.

7 replies

by jlouis45

Try to reinstall the display driver i.e. the VGA driver. This will solve the driver problem. About pnpdrvr.drv this i guess is the sound card driver. Even this can be reinstalled and things will be fine. If still the problem persists you can disable them for sometime and keep the system under observation.

by shanghai sam

I feel the answer was basic; I had tried replacing both the display adapter (ATI Graphics Pro Turbo PCI, atim64 - VT) and the monitor software (Cornerstone p1460) with the latest software with no effect. Also, the suggestion about the sound card driver was irrelevant as evidenced by my description of the problem.

I don't understand the last statement in the answer; I've been through all that. Did the answerer carefully read my statement of the problem?

I have a single problem, not two problems.

And why two identical answers?

I'd sincerely appreciate a meaningful solution to my problem.

Thank you.

Edward

by jlouis45

Try to reinstall the display driver i.e. the VGA driver. This will solve the driver problem. About pnpdrvr.drv this i guess is the sound card driver. Even this can be reinstalled and things will be fine. If still the problem persists you can disable them for sometime and keep the system under observation.

by albert franco ii

My toshiba portable (Tecra 550CDT) began malfunctioning after installing McAfee Utilities. It would cause Delphi 5 to lock up at startup and then upon reboot the machine would lock up with absolutely no indication of what was wrong.

What I did...
Uninstall McAfee Utilities and eradicate all references to McAfee from the registry. In your case it may be some other recently installed program.

This did not solve the boot lock up. I then erased the line you mentioned from the system.ini file and of course noticed what you did. Display limited to 640x480x16.

After reading a MS Knowledge Base article I found that on w95/98 machines that display=pnpdrvr.drv needs to be there so that the system can boot the manufacturers display driver.It's kind of a hook into the regular driver. In the same article it was mentioned that the performance level of the display adaptor could be turned down to troubleshoot.
I put the driver line back in system.ini and turned the adapter accelerationoff and re-booted the computer. Success! I am now testing to see if I can make it crash again with the display accelerator settings in various positions.
Try this and see if it works! Turn off the acceleration...

P.S. While investigating other machines I came across one which has some command line flags on the famous display= line. It looks something like: display=pnpdrvr.drv /d:800x600x256 I don't remember the exact syntax and I don't find this syntax in the MS knowledgebase.

Computers...the ultimate puzzle ;)

Al Franco, II

by 1.e.f.allwein.1

Al Franco, II, gave a thorough, meaningful solution which enabled me to easily and rapidly solve my problem.

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