|
PureBytes Links
Trading Reference Links
|
The excerpt below of a posting early this week has prompted me to send
this message out to all of you.
>Crashes: The two crashes that I had resulted in a Win/95 error message
> that said that MS 6.0 had performed an illegal operation (or
function).
> The first time it occurred, I had deleted the base chart and when I
> attempted to redisplay the base chart, it crashed. The second time it
> occurred, I had just finished an exploration and when I double-clicked
> on one of the securities in the report, it crashed. So far, it hasn't
> done it again.
>
> When I reenter MS 6.0 after it crashes, it asks me if I left
improperly
> (something like that) and I click "Yes" and it goes ahead and loads,
BUT
> when I place the pointer on one of the Tool Bar icons, I no longer get
> the little "reminder" next to the pointer that tells me what that icon
> does. That is how I knew that the program was not operating properly.
If
> I exit MS and reboot, then everything works as expected.
These are all symptoms of a video driver situation. The fact that they
do not happen every time is somewhat unusual but not unheard of. If a
different program was running before or at the same time as MetaStock
and the next time was not and is not, the variables changed. The only
real way to see if this is video is to run Win 95 and MetaStock in "Safe
Mode" which uses a driver written by Microsoft for Windows 95, not
written by a video card manufacturer to utilize their card specifically.
When programming in Windows, you make a call and the operating system
asks the video driver to carry it out. You make the same call no matter
what video card/driver is in use. If the call works correctly on one or
more video card/driver combinations and doesn't work on another video
card/driver combination then that points to the video card/driver
combination. "Safe Mode" takes away this difference as far as the
driver is concerned.
Now, I noticed that George was using a Mattrox Millenium video
card/driver combination. A very good video card. I have one myself.
But, Mattrox has a new driver at least once per month. I have never had
the problems in this E-mail. However, George is. I would suspect we
all have different card/driver versions. Mine is version 4.0, more
specifically 4.03.00.3170 and is dated 11-11-96 (downloaded from their
web site). .
I am posting this publicly in hopes of having others try "Safe Mode" and
realize that video card/driver combinations, mostly drivers, play a very
large role in Windows problems. This started in Win 3.x and still
exists in Windows 95 and Windows NT. They are better and now easier to
find & verify in Win 95 because of "Safe Mode" but they still exist.
Many times the software that "gets blamed" for the problem is only
"blamed" because it happens to be the software running at the time.
Call for support on "illegal operations" in Word, Excel, Norton
Utilities, etc. and you are asked "What video are you using and please
try "Safe Mode" so that video may be ruled out. If the problems
continue then we and they start looking for other causes.
Most of the support people here at Equis are certified in supporting
Microsoft Windows. We use similar techniques to the producers of
Windows to try and isolate problems. Equis has never denied that our
software has "bugs". All software does. In a perfect world none would.
Oh well, since no one is perfect we have had to learn to live with
problems and make our best effort to fix them when we find out about
them. But, just because a problem occurs on your machine, it doesn't
mean it is a "bug" in a specific program, ours or others. In the
Windows environment especially, there are many possible causes of
problems. We, like all software developers (we hope) spend lots of time
and effort attempting to alleviate them. Unfortunately we are not
perfect nor are they.
Equis has always tried to provide quality software that helps you make
money. We work hard everyday to do that and to provide quality support
when you have a problem. The large majority of customers do not have
problems and do make more money because of our efforts. We would like
that to be EVERY customer, but again, this is not a perfect world. Our
efforts are dedicated to that end even though we all that will not
happen. That doesn't mean we quit trying to make it happen.
Bill Forman
Customer Support Manager
Equis International
a Reuters company
|