Instability

  • Thread starter Thread starter Licensed to Quill
  • Start date Start date
L

Licensed to Quill

Anyone know what it means if the contents of any subsidiary screen which
opens in XP jumps up and down a few thousand times a minute? If I am for
example trying to put the cursor on an item to open it up, it is almost
impossible to put the cursor on the item because everything in the screen is
jumping up and down all the time.

(This is a newish computer which had never been updated and I tried
downloading and fully installing over 35 megabytes of update files and it
didn't do anything to assist at all). Should SFC /SCANNOW help? Are there
any service reports on the MS site on this type of problem?

Licensed to Quill
 
Would this be the case if the instability is only in subsidiary windows? I
do have a VIA driver disc which I thought I had used to install everything
on it?
 
Would this be the case if the instability is only in subsidiary windows? I
do have a VIA driver disc which I thought I had used to install everything
on it?
Click to expand...

Possibly, Quill. I'm not technically informed on exactly how drivers work
but consider this... Subsidiary windows are one layer (or more) away from
the main program. Each and every window has to be painted. Every change in
any window has to be painted. Even the illusion of the mouse moving across
the monitor is the result of the screen being rapidly repainted numerous
times. There's constant crosstalk between operating system, programs and
display drivers to get all of this done.

Your display appears to be working normally until you get down to working
with child windows. If it was Windows or even the programs -- I would
expect a display disturbance with menu flyouts and dialogs - not just child
windows. I could be wrong and there's plenty of programmers hanging around
in these groups. If they know of any weakness with child windows, I'm sure
they'll speak up.

As for the VIA drivers. I don't know what version you have on your disk. I
have a 2+ year old system that has survived happily on the VIA drivers that
shipped with XP. I recently upgraded my display adapter and there was a
HUGE box on the first page of the manual stating a minimum version number
for the AGP portion of VIA's drivers. You said your computer was "newish"
so mentioned them as it's something that might help you too.

As far as using sfc /scannow goes, that process can't hurt anything. It
gets a little tricky if you have RTM XP with SP1 layered on top and SFC
needs files from both locations. If you do take this route and have added
SP1 yourself, find the i386 folder on your XP CD and locate the
"ServicePackFiles" subfolder under Windows before starting. Switch between
the two as prompted by SFC.
 
Sharon

Yes, I suppose you are right about all the repainting: In fact my
instability involves something more than I was telling you: The start menu
keeps flashing on and off when I press START and wont stay on unless I keep
the button pressed on the relevant place (either on START or on the program
which I want to sub-menu)

I should probably try to figure out how to roll back the obviously bad
installation of XP Corporate which itself decided to install as an upgrade
to the then existing XP Home (which was in Spanish). This was after I
specifically told it to do an NTFS format over the FAT32 Spanish install and
then do a complete installation. As it didn't do a complete format and
over-install, there is probably some way of rolling it back?

Many thanks

Jonathan
 
I should probably try to figure out how to roll back the obviously bad
installation of XP Corporate which itself decided to install as an upgrade
to the then existing XP Home (which was in Spanish). This was after I
specifically told it to do an NTFS format over the FAT32 Spanish install and
then do a complete installation. As it didn't do a complete format and
over-install, there is probably some way of rolling it back?
Click to expand...

Was the second copy of XP an English version? If yes, it should have
refused to "upgrade" the Spanish XP. At the very least setup should have
formatted completely and installed a fresh single copy of Windows. I
probably would have opted to delete the partition, recreate it, format it
as NTFS and then installed XP. Formatting NTFS from the get go seems to go
a little easier than converting a partition that is already FAT32.

If by chance both versions were Spanish and you did accomplish an "upgrade"
of XP, I believe rollback is only offered when the existing operating
system is an older version of Windows. If created, it shows up as an option
in the Add/Remove Programs list. Unfortunately, I haven't heard of anyone
getting this choice when installing XP over XP. Also, a conversion to NTFS
makes a rollback impossible and the option is lost.
 
Yes, I suspected all that but what I don't understand is where all the
Spanish software which seems to be backed up on my computer came from?
Click to expand...

I don't understand it either. If you installed in the manner that you
described with a standard XP CD, then it shouldn't be there. There is one
spot that the questions are a little tricky and you could end up with a
parallel installation. This would also leave the old programs on the drive
but the new Windows would be unaware of any needing registry entries or any
needing files placed in the Windows folder structure.

Parallel installs are good temporary solutions for grabbing data off a
drive before you wipe it and start over. They are not intended for everyday
use.
fresh install of English Corp over Spanish Home.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "English Corp"? This term is not commonly used to
describe the standard retail XP CD. Corporations that purchase volume
licensing are referred to as "VLK" installations. If this is not a legit
copy of XP, it's anyone's guess which setup it contains and what
installation/repair options it is capable of. These can be very different
than what the standard and VLK versions can do.

Sounds like you need to assess what you have. Decide what you want. Figure
out the best approach to accomplish that goal and then proceed.
 
Actually there is a point of which I might like to know the answer:

WHen I try to install another Partition in an attempt to copy some files
prior to deleting various installations (and put the pagesys file on another
drive), Partition Commander stops at file checking stage telling me that
there are errors involving cross-linked files etc. But nothing shows up on
Chkdsk? Neither on reboot when it does a full /f or on /X. (and obviously
no 98 boot disc will do a scandisk or chkdsk on an NTFS volume)

I have done a partition create this way before so it does seem that this is
what is causing the instability if I could repair it? Is there a proper way
of checking for lost clusters and cross-linked files in XP besides using the
chkdsk utility which doesn't seem to work?
 
Yes, that sounds like a good idea as this computer wont easily go into safe
mode: Sometimes it does and sometimes it goes through the motions and ends
up in normal mode. Hopefully START-RUN-CHKDSK /R (I actually thought it was
/X) will solve this cross linked file problem if it exists. (Or is right
clicking on C: the ONLY way of getting into chkdsk in XP? and if so, how do
you get into /R?)

Ever since the old Windows 3.0 days I have always found that these types of
problem were always caused by lost clusters or cross linked files and were
cured by some type of chkdsk. Many thanks
 
Yes, that sounds like a good idea as this computer wont easily go into safe
mode: Sometimes it does and sometimes it goes through the motions and ends
up in normal mode. Hopefully START-RUN-CHKDSK /R (I actually thought it was
/X) will solve this cross linked file problem if it exists. (Or is right
clicking on C: the ONLY way of getting into chkdsk in XP? and if so, how do
you get into /R?)

Ever since the old Windows 3.0 days I have always found that these types of
problem were always caused by lost clusters or cross linked files and were
cured by some type of chkdsk. Many thanks
Click to expand...

If it's not a hardware problem, all that's left is files... or some user
configuration that we setup wrong somewhere ;^)

For chkdsk in WinXP, there are several ways to start:
--In the GUI - right clicking on a drive icon, selecting Properties> Tools>
Error Checking.
--Start> Run> <chkdsk command of your choice>
--Start>Run>CMD to open the command prompt box. Enter chkdsk command here.
--Starting XP with command line from the F8 "advanced start menu"
--Recovery Console
--From boot (XP setup CD, floppy boot disk with XP tools, etc)

There is a little "gotcha" when asking chkdsk for a report only within the
GUI:
Chkdsk in Read-Only Mode Does Not Detect Corruption on NTFS Volume
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;283340

Some more reading on chkdsk that you might find helpful:
This article includes a discussion of other switches as well as the ones
noted in the title:

An Explanation of the New /C and /I Switches That Are Available to Use with Chkdsk.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314835

This article is a handy one to print out so that it's handy for
emergencies.

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314058
 
Well that was very useful but still nothing is telling me what is going on
with Chkdsk not finding those cross-linked files reported by Partition
Commander while it is trying to change the size of a drive to add another
partition to put the page file and Photoshop scratch file in?
Click to expand...

Are you confident that partition commander is reporting accurately? Have
you checked their online resources for suggestions about this message from
their program?
 
Back
Top