Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: XP standby mode problem

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Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 05:50 AM:

When I put the computer into standby mode, Outlook doesn`t start properly after I have again woken up the computer. The Outlook start screen freezes and it is impossible to end Outlook or properly shut down the computer. Why is that? Is there a standby mode setting to avoid that of problem?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-05-2003, 06:24 AM:

When Outlook freezes, is is possible to press ctrl/alt/del and then kill Outlook via the task manager?

Do you have XP service pack 1 installed and the relevant service pack level for whatever version of MS Office you're using (I have Office 2000, which is currently on SP2)? If the version of Office you have is an older one (97 or earlier) is it officially supposed to be compatible with XP at all?

Other than that no brainwaves I'm afraid. I long since stopped using standby and hibernation mode at all. In 2000, I would get a blue-screen crash caused by an IRQ conflict whenever I tried to use my video capture card following a hibernation and wake-up (the only situation in which I have ever managed to provoke W2K into blue-screen crashing), and have just gone through a full-scale shutdown and reboot ever since. I guess that the problem is something to do with an argument between the motherboard BIOS' control of the ACPI functions and the operating system communicating with PCI devices. I don't know why the HAL can't stop the capture card driver from pulling the whole system down - a badly-written driver, perhaps? But it's just not a big enough issue for me to need to spend time trying to resolve it.

If your freeze happens when Outlook tries to access the modem or LAN card, maybe you're experiencing something similar.

Posted by Jon Bartow (Member # 241) on 05-05-2003, 07:52 AM:

Leo, O2K is on SP3 now.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 09:35 AM:

If I press ctrl/alt/del, I can shut down Outlook (actually O. Express), but only by directly killing msimn.exe in the second window. OE is not displayed as an active program in the first window, because it gets stuck while starting.
I have XP SP1. I use Star Office. I also have Word 97 installed, but I almost never use it. When I do, it works fine.
How would that affect OE?
I can use the modem and IE after standby mode. The only process that doesn`t work anymore is OE.
Interestingly, when I go to standby, wake the computer, then try to go to standby once more, I also get a message (not a blue screen though, I am not even sure if XP does that at all) that says standby mode is not possible because the video capture driver is still active.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-05-2003, 01:35 PM:

Standby, or hibernate? Does the system have advanced power management capability? Does OE auto-dial the modem on start? Maybe the modem bd. isn't waking up.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 02:07 PM:

In the standby mode selected from the start menu where you also shut down or reboot. I always activate one of several dial-up connections depending on the time of day and then start the applications I want manually too. The modem works fine. What is modem bd. ?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-05-2003, 02:10 PM:

Michael - your original post referred to 'Outlook' as distinct from OE. I therefore presumed that you were using the full version of Outlook, which is part of MS Office, hence my question about Office service packs.

Still sounds like an IRQ conflict could be feasible, especially if you too have a video capture card. My system only crashes if you actually try to capture video through Adobe Premiere after a hibernation and wake-up, though. If I leave the video card alone the system works fine, including the modem.

Weird...

Jon - thanks, will download SP3.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 02:31 PM:

No, just OE6. Sorry, my original post was a bit unspecific about that.
Here is another weird thing: I deinstalled MS Messenger and MSN Explorer. Still, when I launch OE, there is the small icon in the taskbar "MS Messenger - not logged in" (or whatever it would be called in the English version). I can also rightclick and launch MS Messenger even though it is supposed to be "deinstalled". The task manager also shows msmsgs.exe to be active.
The program folder and the program files for Messenger are also still there. I am a bit reluctant to simply delete it. But I renamed msmsgs.exe so OE doesn`t find it when starting.
Now OE starts without problems after the computer has woken up. So the evil element was Messenger.
Still, what does it that makes the program get stuck after standby? I also noticed that the msmsgs.exe is only 1+MB but takes up around 8MB when launched. Is that another MS backdoor which does unwanted things when I am not looking?

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 05-05-2003, 07:23 PM:

what you probably have is to programs conflicting with each other when trying to acces the modem at the same time. Go to start then run and type in msconfig and press enter. A box will pop up with selection tabs. Go to start up tab and remove the checkbox from the programs that you do not want to start up automatically. It will ask you to restart the computer. You can also check the start-up program that windows has. Go to start then all programs and look for the start-up file. Look for anything that relates to the programs giving you trouble and remove them.

Sometimes when you remove programs from your system everything does not get removed. You may still have these file links present in the regestry or in the places I mentiooned above.

in reguards to Messenger there are two types. You have msn messenger and Windows messenger. Outlook express will automatically open one of these depending on wich one you have as a default and place the Icon in the bottom right task bar. Do not remove the windows messanger because outlook express may not function correctly without one or the other.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 09:29 PM:

Actually in this example it works better without the messenger because it was that program which caused the hangup.
But just why this problem only occurs after standby mode is still a mystery to me.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-06-2003, 03:36 AM:

All of this demonstrates why I don't use Microsoft clients for e-mail at all (apart from at work, where I have no choice but to use Outlook). I use a combination of MailWasher and Eudora 5.2 for e-mail. I have to have both IE and Netscape installed because some websites will work with one but not the other (and vice-versa), but would get rid of IE if I could.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-06-2003, 01:21 PM:

That still leaves me wondering what exactly happens with Messenger that makes the program crash after standby mode.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-07-2003, 02:10 AM:

I would guess at a plain simple programming bug (let's face it, those aren't exactly unheard of where Microsoft is concerned). Maybe Messenger needs some data from the pagefile which is lost during a standby and restart cycle, and crashes if it can't find it?

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-07-2003, 06:55 AM:

What is the pagefile?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-07-2003, 07:16 AM:

A method used by Windows of extending a computer's RAM by means of so-called 'virtual memory' (known as the swap file in Windows 9x). This is a file, written to the hard disc (usually the system volume, but you can specify another drive), containing information stored in RAM but which is temporarily not needed.

For example, if I had two open applications which were using all the available RAM and then started a third, an existing area of memory might be temporarily written to the page file while I was working with the third application, and then loaded back again when I went back to one of the pre-existing ones.

That is why adding more RAM usually makes a big difference to a PC's performance, because it doesn't need to write to and from the pagefile so much. Another way of gaining a speed advantage is that if your PC has two or more physical hard discs installed, put the pagefile on one which does not contain the system volume. That way, the computer will not be reading backwards and forwards on one hard drive trying to access both pagefile and program data. In XP pro you can alter the pagefile settings by going to start - settings - control panel - system - advanced - performance options - virtual memory, then click on 'change'.

I seem to remember that on some older versions of Windows, the contents of the pagefile/swapfile is lost when you go to standby. I was therefore speculating that if Messenger data were saved in there, it could make the application unstable after the computer wakes up.