Here’s a strange PC problem.
Start situation: PIII 700mhz 128mb SDRAM running Win 98 SE. Fine, no problems, very good and reliable machine. Mainly use Word, Corel, Pagemaker, PhotoShop LE, IE5.
A friend lends me a disk of Quark Express 4.1 for Windows so I can assess if I want to buy it.
I’m in the UK and it’s a US version, so I have some minor glitches installing (e.g. have to change keyboard settings from UK to US) but I get it up and running.
Later, I open Word and try to open a short letter document. System locks. Give it the 3 finger salute. Msg ‘The system is dangerously low on resources, do you want to shut down Word?’. I opt for Yes. System hangs, and the screen refresh is obviously screwed. No option but to re-boot.
Repeat, same result.
I find that in Word, any Open or Save command prodcues same msg, and same irretrievable lock. Nothing wrong or corrupt with any of these documents - can open them with any other
application. All other applications (Corel, PhotoShop, Pagemaker etc.) seem to function fine.
I uninstall Quark using the Add/Remove programs utility.
I delete Word likewise, and re-install Word from the legitimate Msfot Works CD that came with the system.
All seems fine for a while - I can open and save a few times with Word. Then the old problem returns. Any save or open command triggers the ‘low on resources’ msg as before, even if it’s the only app running. I have never seen this message before, even with 3 or 4 memory-intensive apps running.
So it seems that something occurred during the Quark install that interfered with Word’s ability to access RAM to save or open docs. And even a clean re-install of Word only fixes this temporarily.
More info: The PC vendor seem a decent outfit with good tech
support. However, they do NOT provide a CD of the operating system (some weird licensing thing with Msoft). So I can’t re-install Windows as such. I DO have the option to
‘restore’ the entire PC to as-delivered status, so I would then have to re-install my apps and data. This is done using a special system disk which I created (as instructed) upon first taking delivery of the machine. This wouldn’t be such a terrible thing to have to do, but I’d rather not have to.
Other possibly relevant data: I can’t now find any way to persuade the keyboard that it is a UK one and not a US one.
Any ideas? Any good information leading to a solution can be paid for with access to my body, whatever.