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Rules, schmules.......I needed a song so I ripped a couple of CD's that I own and then burned 2 songs into the photoshow on the CD.

The music industry needs to give its head a shake on some things. My friend and I share music.
She sometimes will burn a CD for me of something that she bought. The music industry isn't losing out, because it's not music I would have bought in the first place. She will also copy something I own, but that she wouldn't have bought.
Nobody is losing any royalties. Besides, we all pay the extra fee on blank media now to offset the few cents they think they have lost.

Can someone explain....why do the error reports crop up?

I used to get them only occasionally when I had my old computer and was running Windows 98. But I have a newish computer and have Windows XP.

For example, last night I was working on a photoshow...it took hours....I saved as I went thankfully....(I learned the hard way ).

When I was finally finished to my liking, I then had it saving to my computer...but half way through the dreaded "There is an error an we must close" window came up. You know the one that says any unsaved work will be lost....and then it asks to send an error report before it suddenly closes on you.

Well, last night, the file stopped saving halfway through, and then the computer froze....I got the error thingy and then about 40 cascading error thingies...and even the alt,ctrl, dlte didn't want to work.

I eventually got everything working again and even managed to save my whole program.

Sometimes when I am working in Picture Gear Studio, I get the same thing.

Is Windows XP an unstable program or something?

blues2cruise wrote:Can someone explain....why do the error reports crop up?

I used to get them only occasionally when I had my old computer and was running Windows 98. But I have a newish computer and have Windows XP.

For example, last night I was working on a photoshow...it took hours....I saved as I went thankfully....(I learned the hard way ).

When I was finally finished to my liking, I then had it saving to my computer...but half way through the dreaded "There is an error an we must close" window came up. You know the one that says any unsaved work will be lost....and then it asks to send an error report before it suddenly closes on you.

Well, last night, the file stopped saving halfway through, and then the computer froze....I got the error thingy and then about 40 cascading error thingies...and even the alt,ctrl, dlte didn't want to work.

I eventually got everything working again and even managed to save my whole program.

Sometimes when I am working in Picture Gear Studio, I get the same thing.

Is Windows XP an unstable program or something?

IMO, yes XP is. It's all about Linux baby Anywho. Hard to tell what that error is from. First thing is you could check your log files and see if anything sticks out. Like disk errors, memory errors, DLL errors or some other such thing. I think you go Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Event Viewer. Check the system events and Application events. See if there is anything mentioning the app you were using when it crashed.

The above is if you are using the Windows Classic view. If you are using that new fangled XP theme, then I'm not sure which little group thingie administrative tools is under.

Thanks for the info. Given that I have no extra money to spend I will have to make do with my XP for now.

I went into the administation and took a look for the "error" in the system log.

Here is the one that seems to fit the time frame.

The system detected that network adapter %2 was disconnected from the network, and the adapter's network configuration has been released. If the network adapter was not disconnected, this may indicate that it has malfunctioned. Please contact your vendor for updated drivers.

Does that sound like a plausible reason for the "hanging up" of the program and or the crash. (That's not a real crash though, is it?)

Preface: I am a network admin who deals with hundreds of desktops and dozens of servers daily. I am also a trained Solaris administrator, my web server runs OpenBSD, and my media center runs Ubuntu.

In my experience, Windows XP is a rock solid OS and far more stable than Linux + X server + windowing environment.

Your errors are likely due to bad software of some sort. Often times, various virus protection programs (especially Norton and McAfee), in concert with a piece or two of spyware, some anti-malware software, a firewall, various toolbars, other programs that reside in the system tray, maybe a bad driver, etc, etc, combine to forum an unstable system through no fault of Windows.

If I were working on your computer, the first thing I would do is go through and install any programs that weren't necessary. Then I would go through all the icons in your system tray and disable all of the ones that don't need to be there. Then I'd use Spybot and Ad-Aware to do full scans of your system to clean out any spyware that exists on it. Then I'd replace Norton (if installed) with something less resource-intensive and more stable, such as AVG.

These actions will turn most unstable or slow systems into nice speedy stable machines. It's also entirely possible that you have some bad hardware, such as RAM that's dying, or a bad driver for a piece of hardware.

If I were working on your computer, the first thing I would do is go through and install any programs that weren't necessary

I think you mean "uninstall?

RAM dies? I did not know that. Does it just get "tired or worn out?

I will go and have a look and see if I have any junk to get rid of.

blues2cruise wrote:

If I were working on your computer, the first thing I would do is go through and install any programs that weren't necessary

I think you mean "uninstall?

RAM dies? I did not know that. Doe sit just get "tired or worn out?

I will go and have a look and see if I have any junk to get rid of.

Whoops.

And yes, any hardware component goes bad. Hard drives, being mechanical devices that spin, are most prone to failure, followed closely by fans.

However, even solid-state parts like RAM, CPUs, motherboards, etc, can die for all sorts of reasons. Bad RAM usually first shows up as random errors, blue screens, unexplainable crashes, etc. If you want to test your RAM you can download a boot CD of Memtest86. You basically burn the CD, reboot your computer to boot the CD, and it launches right into an intense RAM-testing program. If it runs for a while with no errors you can be pretty sure your RAM is OK.

That said, this is almost certainly a software problem. RAM problems are generally more like "system completely stops responding" or "random blue screen of death" or something like that.

jonnythan wrote:Preface: I am a network admin who deals with hundreds of desktops and dozens of servers daily. I am also a trained Solaris administrator, my web server runs OpenBSD, and my media center runs Ubuntu.

In my experience, Windows XP is a rock solid OS and far more stable than Linux + X server + windowing environment.

Your errors are likely due to bad software of some sort. Often times, various virus protection programs (especially Norton and McAfee), in concert with a piece or two of spyware, some anti-malware software, a firewall, various toolbars, other programs that reside in the system tray, maybe a bad driver, etc, etc, combine to forum an unstable system through no fault of Windows.

If I were working on your computer, the first thing I would do is go through and install any programs that weren't necessary. Then I would go through all the icons in your system tray and disable all of the ones that don't need to be there. Then I'd use Spybot and Ad-Aware to do full scans of your system to clean out any spyware that exists on it. Then I'd replace Norton (if installed) with something less resource-intensive and more stable, such as AVG.

These actions will turn most unstable or slow systems into nice speedy stable machines. It's also entirely possible that you have some bad hardware, such as RAM that's dying, or a bad driver for a piece of hardware.

I'm a systems engineer myself andmy experience has not be totally opposite but almost. All my linux machines I've turned on configed, set to update at night and forget about. They just keep going and going and... Same mostly with my windows 2k3 servers, though I have a couple 2k servers that could use a good clean up, but they are non-essential servers so that kinda floats to the bottom. Windows automatic updates though can't be trusted IMO. Had more than one server need to be fixed due to bad updates. As far as XP, it's stable out of the box. But once stuff starts to get added, it goes downhill fast. Doesn't help we have tons of user that ignore policy and install all kinds of crapware. But even legit software and XP don't get along a lot. Thank goodness for True Image.

And as Johnnythan said, memory can go bad, just as any part in a PC can. It is more common that most think and I bet a large chunk of folks that get new PC's coulda bought new RAM instead and the errors would go away.

t_bonee wrote: But even legit software and XP don't get along a lot.

Depends on how you define "legit software" There's a ton of 'legit' software I would not allow on my network because it's total crap.

In any case, I want to be clear that I was talking about desktop machines. I'd never choose Windows servers over Solaris/Unix/BSD servers for anything important.

I'll say that a properly configured Windows system that doesn't have terrible, buggy, unstable software or drivers installed on it is *the* most stable desktop OS I've ever used.

blues2cruise wrote:The music industry needs to give its head a shake on some things. My friend and I share music.
She sometimes will burn a CD for me of something that she bought. The music industry isn't losing out, because it's not music I would have bought in the first place. She will also copy something I own, but that she wouldn't have bought.
Nobody is losing any royalties. Besides, we all pay the extra fee on blank media now to offset the few cents they think they have lost.

i think your reasoning has me shaking my head...

you're saying that based on the mere fact your and your friend(s) wouldn't have bought the music in the first place means the music industry (or whoever) isn't losing music when you share it?? somehow i don't think the music industry sees it that way. i'm sure they're of the belief that if someone doesn't want to pay for the music, they shouldn't have it...

if you still believe your logic holds water, try this... go into an eating establishment that has an all you can eat food buffet... bring along couple of friends that wouldn't want to pay for the buffet - hell, i'll go with you. start getting food and sharing with your friends... let the management know it's okay because they wouldn't have normally paid for that food anyway...