Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!se-sd!retter
From: retter@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Rob Retter)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Unrecoverable Application Error message in Win3.0
Message-ID: <3449@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 2 Jul 90 17:57:30 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: NCR Corporation, Systems Engineering - San Diego
Lines: 29

It may be more appropriate for me to call MicroSoft on the phone and ask
them, but God knows if I'd reach someone who really knows the answer to:

    What *exactly* does Unrecoverable Application Error mean?

Is it a generic error msg which is displayed at any one of three hundred
places in the Windoes 3.0 code?  Does it mean that a particular *kind* of
error occurred, such as an I/O failure or memory access or bad instruction?

I keep getting the damned thing at apparently random times: once saving a
file in NotePad, once immediately after clicking to start printing inside
PaintBrush, once halfway *through* printing in PaintBrush (half my picture
came out of the printer....)

I do note that Windows seems pretty much fried once this happens.  After
clicking "Okay", error window goes away, but subsequent operations always
hang the machine and force me to reboot.

I've seen discussions of Paradise VGA and WestDigtl disk controller cards
conflicting over memory, memory chips which become "bad" (or at least
unreliable) once the system physically warms up, advice to add "EMMEXCLUDE"
lines to my SYSTEM.INI file (which I did, to no effect).

So, anyone at MicroSoft (or anywhere else, for that matter) what does the
error message really tell me, other than the "unrecoverable" nature of the
problem?

- Rob Retter
  retter@se-sd.sandiego.ncr.com