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From: tat@pccuts.pcc.amdahl.com (Tom Thackrey)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Windows lock up ...
Message-ID: <819@pccuts.pcc.amdahl.com>
Date: 20 Sep 89 17:22:47 GMT
References: <2599@zaphod.axion.bt.co.uk>
Reply-To: tat@pccuts.pcc.amdahl.com (Tom Thackrey)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale  CA
Lines: 20

In article <2599@zaphod.axion.bt.co.uk> pwilliam@axion.bt.co.uk writes:
 >Is there anyone out there who could give me some insight to the problems
 >I am having with MS Windows?
 >
 >I am using a Zenith Supersport 286 with MS DOS 3.21. Mostly I use
 >Excel spreadsheet from windows 2.03. I am a non technical user.
 >Every now and again I ask Excel to change the fonts, or print
 >preview a large document and the egg timer comes up and nothing
 >happens, no disk accesses, noting. I have left it as long as 20
 >minutes before rebooting.
 >The mouse will move the timer round the
 >screen but thats all. Alt key stroke doesn't work either. Sometimes
 >it locks up with the cross cursor. The only way out is to reboot.
 >
I was having similar problems running pagmaker.  I changed my TEMP
environment variable to point to my hard disk instead of my ram-disk
and the problem went away.  My guess was that either pagemaker or the
spooler or both were unable to cope with running out of temp space.
I have not done the research to verify my theory, but my lock-up
problem is gone.