Digital Workshop

And I was having so much fun...

I have page on a publication with a scrollable frame. Inside this scrollable frame I want to have a text field, and every now and then an image. To make gaps in the text for the image I just insert blank lines - i.e. I'm only using one tall text field but several images.

To do this I had to extend the scrollable frame to be 2500 in height, drag down the text field to extend it and type into it, add the pictures, position then and insert them into the frame.

When I reached a certain point, Opus and Windows crashed with a Kernel32 error.

I had to power down (system is totally frozen), on restart blue screen Windows Protection Error. On restart - safe mode and I scanned all disks. On restart, started normally.

Opening my publication I'm informed that the page I was working on is corrupt. I open it anyway and it's totally blank.

I restored from a previous copy (where all the objects were on the page but the scrollable frame is only 1000 in height and the text field is as yet blank) and started to insert the text and images into the scrollable frame again. Same process as above.

At about the same point, the same thing happens, only this time I go through the loop of Windows Protection Error/Safe Mode a few times before finally getting a normal startup. Scary time - needed several cups of tea.

I'm finally back in. I open Opus nervously and I don't load from the last autosave but the last save (which was just before I typed and it crashed). The screen goes black then blue screen complaining about something (I didn't write this down). On pressing enter I'm back to the desktop (thankfully) and Opus has closed itself.

First of all, is there some kind of limit on the length (height) of scrollable frames or text fields that I might be hitting? DW????

I've already had some funnies with scrollable frames corrupting when being copied:
viewtopic.php?t=586
which I'm not alone with. I've no idea if this has anything to do with this problem except that it's scrollable frames again.

I'm not sure at this point what to do. I'm not keen to repeat the process that caused the crash because it's so severe.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Melanie

I did a CTRL + ALT on loading Opus and reset the registry entries.

But I can't load .imps anymore,- "Updating Thumbnail Images" stalls and I have to close down Opus using CNTRL + ALT + DEL (not responding).

So I would guess that the next stage is to reinstall Opus... but my original problem remains - if I continue to do the steps above in the scrollable frame (for the third time) is it going to crash and (as it would now appear) corrupt Opus?

I feel a phone call to DW coming on... Brace yerselves!

Cheers

Melanie

I've removed and reinstalled the graphics drivers. Problem solved, Opus loads etc perfectly. This means that the graphics drivers became corrupted. How could this be? How could something I do in Opus break the nvidia drivers? Will it happen again?

I have my previous backup of the publication loaded. I'm going to leave the scrollable frames alone till I've spoken to the DW guys, but I feel like I'm handling a bomb!

I've already had problems with this card and Opus - it s GeForce Ti4200 and I have to run on an old version of the nvidia drivers. Ever since DirectX 9.0c. I probably need a whole pc upgrade - motherboard, chip, memory, video card and Windows XP - I've been holding back because I use the ISA slot on my current VIA motherboard for a second soundcard, and I've been told that current motherboards no longer support ISA?

My current spec is:

Stupid Win Me, feeble 700 MHz PIII, crowded 384MB ram, nasty DirectX 9.0c topped by incompatible GeForce Ti4200 that Nvidia has abandoned.

As you can tell by my spec, it's been a long time since I looked at hardware - any recommendations for graphics cards/hardware/OS that runs well with Opus Pro 04 XE 4.50?

Cheers

Melanie

Well, I WOULD have recommended the Matrox range (I use a Parhelia), but my card is having problems with Opus, too (posted elsewhere on this).
Latest video BIOS and drivers. DW say it's the card, Matrox say it isn't. status quo!
Luckily, I only suffer from artifacts and mis-drawing in the editing stage - the published work appears to be OK.

Hi Chris,

I'm not familiar with your hardware, or how old the Matrox Parhelia is, but it sounds like one to avoid.

Thanks for the info

I think I want whatever DW has...

Melanie

We have a mixture of cards (partly to aid testing) - mostly nVidia GeForce and Quadro with Matrox G series and some ATi cards as well.

Thanks. Hmmm.

O for my old Voodoo. 16 megger.

Melanie

This might not be relevant, and even if it is, it probably won't help you.

That's a great positive way to start a post, isn't it?

A long time ago back when I used Win98SE, I had a lot of these kernel problems, just like you are having. Nothing I did seemed to make them go away permanently. They would hibernate for a while and then return.

In the finish, I ditched Win98 and installed Win 2000 Pro (ignoring the protests of my under-resourced PC).

Processing speed wasn't an issue -- there wasn't any! but I reverted back to my old DOS days, where multi-tasking meant "Press Enter" and go an make a cup of coffee. However, the relevant point here is that the kernel error messages disappeared, never to return again -- touch wood.

I can also recall having problems with DX9, to the extent that I reformatted my drive, re-installed everything and stayed with DX8. This didn't fix the kernel problem, but other display issues disappeared.

I subsequently upgraded to what was a top-end computer at the time, kept Win2K, and so far, life has been good.

I know there are users with Win95 and Win98 who are not having problems, which seems to suggest that there might be a driver problem or an intermittent hardware problem like a faulty memory address.

Regards