tmp files and corrupt ppt's

[Don]

I have students saving their powerpoint presentations to
a Win2k file server from Win98 clients. Totally randomly
the file FILENAME.PPT is saved along with a PPTxxxx.TMP
(x's are random numbers)file.

The .PPT file is corrupt and trying to open results in
a "PowerPoint can't open the type of file represented by
\\Server\User\BlaBla\Filename.ppt" error message. I then
rename the PPTxxxx.TMP to PPTxxxx.PPT and their work
opens fine.

The TMP file has a later time stamp than the PPT file so
we do have the latest version.

This is random. Some students have no problems. All
clients are ghosted the same. Fast save was removed from
Options in PowerPoint with no resulting change.

Any ideas?
Thanks

 

[Steve Rindsberg, PPTMVP]

ISTR that at least some versions of NT server will time out a user after a
period of inactivity.
I wonder if that could be at issue?

--

Steve Rindsberg PPT MVP
PPTLive ( http://www.pptlive.com ) Featured Speaker
PPTools: http://www.pptools.com
PPT FAQ: http://www.pptfaq.com

 

[Austin Myers]

Don,

It's highly recommended to save to the local hard drive and then copy the
file to the server. This is especially true if it's a Novell server. I
believe what you are seeing is a known problem in that PPT seems to have a
problem if the network is busy during the save function.

Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team