This is a new one on me!

[pcshark]

Wow. I've never seen an error message like this. We have a user who tried to open a fax attachment in Outlook 2000 (standard procedure around here) and this is the error message she got:

Cannot open this item. The text formatting command is not available. It may not be installed correctly. Please install Outlook again. Out of memory or system resources. Close some programs or windows and try again.

All that was in one window. I checked the system resources through System Properties and this is what it said:

System Resources: Very Low - 4% free - See below

Below in the window it said:

System resources are low. Some programs will not run.

All she had open was Outlook. I even tried to Ctrl-Alt-Del and close processes, all except Explorer and Systray, but the resources never came up at all. She has 64MB RAM and over 5GB free on her drive. When I bounced the PC, it was working fine, but she said it works for a while then it stops working and she gets those messages. I found it quite odd, sound like a virus? Hard to believe those resources are that low when she only uses Outlook and WordPerfect (v.8)

Thanks in advance

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R. Bret Walker, CNE

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews, movie reviews written for the people and by the people.

"Now that's a damn shame, folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that!"

[tregee]

Word perfect by itself is a memory hog and I wouldn't run it on anything less than 96megs if you plan on running anything else on the pc.
What's in the systray? If she has alot of useless stuff in there get rid of it.
Delete the temp files.
You said she runs the pc for awhile and then it happens, it could be possible that she is doing lots of cutting and pasteing, or opening mutilple doc's befor she gets around to checking out the fax in outlook.

[pcshark]

Originally posted by tregee:
Word perfect by itself is a memory hog and I wouldn't run it on anything less than 96megs if you plan on running anything else on the pc.

Normally I'd agree, but we have a lot of clients here that have a mere 32MB and run a lot more apps than what she does.

What's in the systray? If she has alot of useless stuff in there get rid of it.
Delete the temp files.

You know, you'd think I would have thought of that but I didn't. Overanalysis, I guess. I'll give that a try and get back to you...

You said she runs the pc for awhile and then it happens, it could be possible that she is doing lots of cutting and pasteing, or opening mutilple doc's befor she gets around to checking out the fax in outlook.

Not likely, not this user. She does very VERY little. More like type a letter once in a while. Thanks for your prompt response, I'll go for the systray and temp files and see what happens.



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R. Bret Walker, CNE

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews, movie reviews written for the people and by the people.

"Now that's a damn shame, folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that!"

[WildTech]

Have you tried swapping out the ram shark?? I know it sounds like the obvious, but I've had systems give off low resource messages when the ram starts to go down for the count. Good Luck Buddy

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WildTech
MasterMind Computers ... Bring your PC to the Master!!

[willieray]

i just had to reply on your signature. Better off dead is one of the classics. My last signature ( until this morning) was ~ where all the white women at? keep up the good signatures! (they make me smile big)

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"A man that loves whiskey, and hates kids, can't be all bad"
~W.C. Fields

[pcshark]

I'm currently pursuing a solution based on the premise that WordPerfect is indeed a resource hog. Until I tested it I had no idea how much. The firm is moving to Office 2000, so it may be a moot point soon, but here's my findings:

Rebooted the computer, resources at 91%.
Opened Outlook 2000 and another user's calendar, resources dropped to 85%.
Closed Outlook, resources rebounded to 91%.

So far so good, right?

Opened WordPerfect, resources dropped to 77%. Hm, 14% drop, but that's ok.
Closed WordPerfect, resources rebounded to 81%. What happened to the other 10%???
Opened WordPerfect, resources dropped to 67%. Huh!
Closed WordPerfect, resources rebounded to 75%. Ok, now it's starting to make sense.
Opened and closed WordPerfect, resources are at 66% now.

Every time I opened and closed WordPerfect the resources dropped a little more. Novell would call that a memory leak, and I would call it a piss-poor job of writing code. Now, this is WordPerfect 8 with service pack 7 applied. I'm going to elevate this to Corel tech support, so I'll report back later.

Thanks again for all your help! (-:

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R. Bret Walker, CNE

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews, movie reviews written for the people and by the people.

"Now that's a damn shame, folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that!"

[CondoPC]

got a reg hack that will release those memeory residents if you want it.

[CondoPC]

here is the link. Let me know if it works http://www.regedit.com/detail/667.html

[This message has been edited by CondoPC (edited November 22, 2000).]

[pcshark]

Thanks a bunch, will try that and get back to you. As I won't be back at that firm until next Tuesday (11-28) I won't be checking back in until then. Thanks again.

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R. Bret Walker, CNE

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews, movie reviews written for the people and by the people.

"What the hell's the matter with you? You could have killed him!"
"So what if I did?"
"I don't know, it seems a little harsh..."

[This message has been edited by pcshark (edited November 22, 2000).]

[Dav]

What type of memory is in the machine? SIMM? DIMM?

Some memory (I believe its DIMM), has a problem called "Memory Leak". Correct me if I'm wrong, but the memory fills up as apps are opened and closed, but due to faulty/shoddy writing of the apps, the application(s) don't release the memory space they were using.

There are a multitude of shareware apps out there just for this purpose. The only other way of releasing those nasty ole apps from the memory is shutting the machine down, and restarting it.

[pcshark]

Well, the registry hack worked. Every time she closes Word Perfect now her resources rebound completely. Thanks for all the help!

By the way, 72-pin SIMMs. Four of them. Compaq Deskpro2000-233.

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R. Bret Walker, CNE

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews, movie reviews written for the people and by the people.

"What the hell's the matter with you? You could have killed him!"
"So what if I did?"
"I don't know, it seems a little harsh..."