powerpoint crashes all the time, why?

[alex@bassenian]

This post may be long but I'm trying to be as detailed as possible.



OS: XP pro, Office suite: small office upgraded to XP office, 80 gigs hd, 1
gigabyte of RAM, 3.0 ghz hyper threading CPU.



I have open one large PowerPoint file (200 MB), in slide sorter view. I
open a second file (large or small), also in slide sorter view. Sometimes I
click "Arrange All" to have both presentations showing at the same time,
sometimes not. I copy from one to 15 slides from one presentation to paste
in the other. When I press Ctrl - C to copy the slides, the cursor goes to
the hourglass and stays there. Sometimes I immediately get an error message
telling me that a problem has occurred and PowerPoint must be closed. Other
times it just hangs up and then I press Ctrl + Alt + Del to get the task
manager, and once I elect to "End Now," I get the error message screen and
then PowerPoint closes.



I have encountered this working with files both on the network drive as well
as on my hard drive.

In an effort to keep it from happening, I have tried copying and pasting one
slide at a time, and saving each time. I can usually get 3-5
copy-and-pastes that way, but it will still eventually hang-up on me.



I have found that by creating a new PowerPoint file, and copying and pasting
slides to that file first (so that it's a very small file), and then copying
and pasting to the larger presentation file, I can get a little more done
without PowerPoint crashing.



Even going so far as to close everything out but PowerPoint (including
Outlook) has not kept it from happening. It still crashes. In the
EventViewer it just says "powerpoint.exe" is hanging.



Any help would be appreciated

Alex

 

[B]

First of all ... thank you, thank you, thank you.

By including your versions and all details, people with information can post
appropriate answers. Too often the 1st reply is an appeal for more
information. Thank you.

Now, on to business.

OS: XP pro, Office suite: small office upgraded to XP office, 80 gigs hd, 1
gigabyte of RAM, 3.0 ghz hyper threading CPU.

Nice hardware. I've always worried about the upgrade versions being as good
as the full version, but that may not be the problem.

I have open one large PowerPoint file (200 MB), in slide sorter view. I
open a second file (large or small), also in slide sorter view. Sometimes I
click "Arrange All" to have both presentations showing at the same time,
sometimes not. I copy from one to 15 slides from one presentation to paste
in the other. When I press Ctrl - C to copy the slides, the cursor goes to
the hourglass and stays there. Sometimes I immediately get an error message
telling me that a problem has occurred and PowerPoint must be closed. Other
times it just hangs up and then I press Ctrl + Alt + Del to get the task
manager, and once I elect to "End Now," I get the error message screen and
then PowerPoint closes.

My system is considerably less then yours and will do this task without
hanging, although it does get a little out of breath. Have you tried the
'insert slides from file ...' method instead of cut and paste?
I do not know if MS's clipboard uses temp files, is there a chance there
are a lot of temp files in the temp folder?
I had to combine a group of the presentations I do, to obtain the file
size you mentioned (200 megs), and ended up with well over 3000 slides. Is
this a storage repository presentation? or are you storing pictures that
have more data than you are able to project? I'd try to get the file size
down, personnally. If the problem is a resource problem (even with you SOTA
system), this should help. See this link for optimizing your presentation
information:
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00062.htm

I have encountered this working with files both on the network drive as well
as on my hard drive.

Never use Powepoint over a network, unless you truely have no other option.
It is know to be problematic. PowerPoint will use a lot of band width to
stay in touch with it's source file. When your system locks, do you have a
way to tell if there is any network traffic? If there is, then this would
be my guess.
See this link for network information:
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00122.htm

In an effort to keep it from happening, I have tried copying and pasting one
slide at a time, and saving each time. I can usually get 3-5
copy-and-pastes that way, but it will still eventually hang-up on me.

I have found that by creating a new PowerPoint file, and copying and pasting
slides to that file first (so that it's a very small file), and then copying
and pasting to the larger presentation file, I can get a little more done
without PowerPoint crashing.

Even going so far as to close everything out but PowerPoint (including
Outlook) has not kept it from happening. It still crashes. In the
EventViewer it just says "powerpoint.exe" is hanging.

Maybe the best course of action would be to start at the beginning and
run through the easy stuff first and hope we don't need the rest.
1) Is your disk defraged
2) Is your temp folder empty
3) Are 'fast saves' turned off
See this link for more basics. Let us know if it continues after these are
done.
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00034.htm

Any help would be appreciated

Alex

B

===============
Please spend a few minutes checking out www.pptfaq.com This link will
answer most of our questions, before you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam, ant-virus, anti-nuisance
misdirection.

 

[Echo S]

In addition to B's information (and I echo his thank yous!), try
changing your hardware acceleration.
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00129.htm