Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!reading!minster!paulb
From: paulb@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Windows lockup solution
Message-ID: <668448697.4413@minster.york.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Mar 91 16:11:37 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England
Lines: 27

For ages I've been having problems with Windows locking up periodically.
It's always temporary (i.e. if you wait, the system frees up), but
frequent.  The more concurrent activities, and the more disk accesses
going on, the more likely it is to occur.  I'm sure I can remember
someone complaining about the same thing here some while ago.

Well, I've found *THE ANSWER* (no, not 42).  If you place the line
VirtualHDIrq=on
in the [386Enh] section of your system.ini, the problem goes away. 
According to the Microsoft release notes, the default setting of this
switch is "on", but if I explicitly switch it off, the problem recurs.

Anyone care to hazard a guess about what's going on?

Paul.

PS I haven't exhaustively tested this yet, but I'm fairly confident that
   the problem has gone away.

+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
|Paul Butcher              | JANET:  paulb@uk.ac.york.minster              |
|Dept. of Computer Science | EARN:   paulb@minster.york.ac.uk              |
|University of York        | UUNET:  ..!uunet!mcsun!ukc!minster!paulb      |
|York  YO1 5DD  ENGLAND    | ARPA:   paulb%york.minster@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk |
|Tel: (0904) 432760        | Alternative address:                          |
|     (+44 904) 432760     |         PRAB1@uk.ac.york                      |
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