Please Help Jonathon

[Marcus]

This problem has been causing me pain for weeks, msn
messenger 6 installs fine, runs in the background fine,
when i go to maximise a conversation window, or open a
new conversation window or sometimes a minute or 2 after
I have opened a conversation window my computer
completely freezes I cant use ctrl alt delete or shut
down or anything all i can do is reset my computer and
have to go through scandisk etc. I formatted my hard
drive and installed msn messenger 6 and Windows XP
Professional only and it still freezes, msn messenger 5
works fine without any problems, the machine has never
frozen until msn messenger 6 was installed, the computer
is a pentium II 300 MHz with 192 Mb RAM 20GB harddrive
NTFS file system (msn messenger freezes when file system
was fat 32 as well) and i have all the updates including
service pack 1 and internet explorer 6 service pack 1,
the version of msn messenger 6 I have is 6.0.602 which is
the final release, graphics card ATI 3D Rage LT Pro with
signed windows xp driver, directx 9b. I have checked
event viewer and there are no error messages displayed,
the machine has the latest bios update my computers data
and time are synchronised with the windows time server. I
have done work as a computer technician and I cant work
it out, any help at all from anyone or help from Jonathon
Kay would be very much appreciated.

 

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Greetings Marcus,

Finding a solution to this one will unfortunately be a needle in a haystack (as I'm sure
you're aware). My suggestion to you (if you haven't already tried this) is to remove
everything else from running (besides the bare essentials) and then trying Messenger to see
if it actually causes the "freeze" on its own -- you can use MSConfig (click Start, Run,
type "msconfig" and click OK) to disable applications running at startup time.

Since there may be some graphics problem here, click Start, then Control Panel, Appearance
and Themes, and then Display. Choose the Settings tab, Advanced button, Troubleshoot tab,
and move the acceleration all the way to the left and try again.
____________________________________________
Jonathan Kay
Windows MVP, Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com

 

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Hi Marcus,

It could be -- albeit a very odd one. Even after a complete format, if you're using the same
drivers (guessing here that there's some sort of driver issue), you'll still see the problem.

You said before that you were/are a computer tech, if you have any spare components lying
around (especially video cards), you might try swapping them in and seeing if you can isolate
the issue.
____________________________________________
Jonathan Kay
Windows MVP, Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com

 

[Marcus]

Thanks for the hasty reply. I have no spare parts for the
machine video card wise, all I have is a spare 4 GB hard
drive since it is an older model computer (Compaq Armada
1750 Laptop), all my drivers are updated with the latest
signed ones although there is an unsigned driver update
for my display driver which i havent installed. One thing
I noticed was that msn messenger 6 froze less often if
service pack 1 wasnt installed, i.e msn messenger would
run ok for 20 minutes or so before freezing, as soon as I
installed windows xp pro service pack 1 the freezing
would occur more often, in both cases the freezing would
only happen when a conversation window was opened or
maximised or during a conversation and would run fine in
the background. I'm really lost on this one, what is the
differences in programming code between msn messenger 6
and msn messenger 5 that could be causing msn messenger 6
to cause complete computer freezes.

Original Message-----

 

[JW]

Is the computer itself frezzing or is just the video frezing. Check this
with some keyboard sequences that will make something happen without you
using your mouse. If it isn only the video frezing then I also suspect your
video card. I had this problem last year and it took me months to realize
that I had a flaky video card.

 

[Marcus]

Thanks for the hasty reply. I have no spare parts for the
machine video card wise, all I have is a spare 4 GB hard
drive since it is an older model computer (Compaq Armada
1750 Laptop), all my drivers are updated with the latest
signed ones although there is an unsigned driver update
for my display driver which i havent installed. One thing
I noticed was that msn messenger 6 froze less often if
service pack 1 wasnt installed, i.e msn messenger would
run ok for 20 minutes or so before freezing, as soon as I
installed windows xp pro service pack 1 the freezing
would occur more often, in both cases the freezing would
only happen when a conversation window was opened or
maximised or during a conversation and would run fine in
the background. I'm really lost on this one, what is the
differences in programming code between msn messenger 6
and msn messenger 5 that could be causing msn messenger 6
to cause complete computer freezes

-----Original Message-----
Hi Marcus,

It could be -- albeit a very odd one. Even after a

complete format, if you're using the same

drivers (guessing here that there's some sort of driver

issue), you'll still see the problem.

You said before that you were/are a computer tech, if

you have any spare components lying

around (especially video cards), you might try swapping

them in and seeing if you can isolate

 

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Hi Marcus,

Worth a try -- there's really no harm in doing so (you can always go into Safe Mode and
rollback the driver or use System Restore if someone drastically goes wrong).
____________________________________________
Jonathan Kay
Windows MVP, Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com

 

[Marcus]

I tryed the driver update which worked fine but msn
messenger is still freezing, what differences are there
in code between msn messenger 6 and msn messenger 5 that
could cause a freeze, I have noticed a freezing problem
with msn messenger 6 on a few other older pc's is there
at all an msn messenger 6 lite version that is basically
msn messenger 5 with an updated GUI and the new emoticons
and display picture only that i could obtain since i
cannot run msn messenger 6, is there an earlier beta
version of msn messenger 6 that isnt far removed from msn
messenger 5 that could be used. Any other suggestions for
getting msn messenger 6 to run would be greatly
appreciated, thanks for all your assistance.

-----Original Message-----
Hi Marcus,

Worth a try -- there's really no harm in doing so (you

can always go into Safe Mode and

 

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Hi Marcus,

I haven't seen the details of the source code of either to be able to answer that question.

I honestly don't have any other suggestions for you, except to use MSN Messenger 5 instead.
____________________________________________
Jonathan Kay
Windows MVP, Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com