PPoint animations lock up my PC completely

[Gary]

Hello there.

Firstly, apologies for the length of this post; I thought it best to be as
thorough and detailed as possible. If you have time to read through this and
offer any advice I'd be *enormously* grateful.

Basically, I have a huge problem using animations in Powerpoint 2003 (as
part of Office 2003 Student and Teacher edition). I'm running Office 2003
Student and Teacher Edition (fully updated) with XP Pro (also fully updated)
on an Athlon 3400, ASUS K8V Deluxe Mboard with Radeon 9800Pro graphics card.

Whenever I work with custom animations of any kind, be it to text boxes,
clip art, or whatever, I cannot 'autopreview' any of the animations or
'play' them (either as part of an individual slide or a running slideshow)
otherwise my PC will freeze completely; not crash out of PPoint, but rather
completely lock up my PC, freezing the screen in the middle of whatever
animation was running, and leaving the mouse and keyboard completely
unresponsive; the only option being to reboot using the reset switch on the
front of my PC. Bizarrely the 'freeze' happens at random intervals;
sometimes the custom animations can be viewed on screen with no problems for
10-15 minutes, other times I have just seconds before my PC freezes. If I
avoid asking PPoint to actually draw the animations, then I can still
program them and create presentations.

I have no stability problem like this in any other program on my PC, just
PPoint.

I've reported the odd behaviour to Microsoft support and a few individuals
have been very helpful in trying to troubleshoot the problem, but to no
avail, hence this plea for help. So far I have tried the following:

- Repairing Microsoft Office installation from Add/Remove programs.
- Googling for a possible resolution.
- Trawling the MS knowledge base.
- Switching off my anti-virus (CA ETrust Antivirus).
- Running a full system scan for a virus.
- Running scandisk for hard drive errors.
- Running Office in safe mode.
- Turning off 'allow fast saves'.
- Turning off hardware acceleration on my graphics card.
- Running Windows in safe mode.
- Removing all start-up programs/services from within Msconfig (apart from
Microsoft services)
- Reinstalling the Office installation from Add/Remove programs.
- Deleting the entire registry branch associated with Office then running
detect and repair to create new registry entries.

I only got the PC a few weeks ago, and Office 2003 at roughly the same time,
primarily because I use PPoint so much as a teacher. I can still just about
use PPoint to create slideshows, but it's maddening that I can't preview
them at all on my PC. I really hope that somebody can offer any further
suggestions - it would be reassuring to even just know that I'm not the only
one to have experienced this problem!

Thanks in advance for *any* help,

Gary

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

Hi Gary,

I'm sure that is a terrible experience.

I can't suggest much since you seem to have done everything possible.
However, whatever you have tried was software related and the fault can also
be related to the hardware. Try the following:

1. Check if there are updated drivers for your motherboard or video card -
also Google(adj.) on http://groups.google.com to find out if other users
with the same hardware have similar problems.

2. If you can do it, open your system and remove your video card - then put
it back again - be sure to be careful of static and preferably get this done
through a trained hardware person.

3. Make sure there is no problem with your RAM - if you have multiple RAM,
try removing one of them at a time to check if the problem is resolved.

4. Update your DirectX.

Do get back and let us know.


--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html

Technical Specialist, PowerPoint Live
http://www.powerpointlive.com

 

[Echo S]

Thanks for all the detail, Gary. It's helpful.

It seems you've tried nearly everything, but I agree with what Geetesh has
suggested--Updating video drivers would be the first thing I'd try, as a
matter of fact. You might want to set a system restore point, though, in Win
XP just in case the new driver makes things worse!

FWIW, testing in Safe Mode might shed some light. If you boot into Safe Mode
and can use the animation previews there, it's probably a video driver
issue.

I was also going to suggest updating Direct X.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=2
You'll want the 9.0b "end user run time."

 

[Gary]

Hi Gary,

I'm sure that is a terrible experience.

I can't suggest much since you seem to have done everything possible.
However, whatever you have tried was software related and the fault can also
be related to the hardware. Try the following:

1. Check if there are updated drivers for your motherboard or video card -
also Google(adj.) on http://groups.google.com to find out if other users
with the same hardware have similar problems.

2. If you can do it, open your system and remove your video card - then put
it back again - be sure to be careful of static and preferably get this done
through a trained hardware person.

3. Make sure there is no problem with your RAM - if you have multiple RAM,
try removing one of them at a time to check if the problem is resolved.

4. Update your DirectX.

Do get back and let us know.


--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html

Technical Specialist, PowerPoint Live
http://www.powerpointlive.com

Hi Geetesh.

Thank you very much for your reply.

I'll try everything you suggest, although I do already have up-to-date
Direct X. It would never have occurred to me that the video card might need
to be reseated or that one of my memory modules might be to blame. Really
hope it's not a motherboard driver problem!

Sincere thanks,

Gary

 

[Gary]

Thanks for all the detail, Gary. It's helpful.

It seems you've tried nearly everything, but I agree with what Geetesh has
suggested--Updating video drivers would be the first thing I'd try, as a
matter of fact. You might want to set a system restore point, though, in Win
XP just in case the new driver makes things worse!

FWIW, testing in Safe Mode might shed some light. If you boot into Safe Mode
and can use the animation previews there, it's probably a video driver
issue.

I was also going to suggest updating Direct X.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=2
You'll want the 9.0b "end user run time."

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]
http://www.echosvoice.com
presenter, PPT Live '04
Oct 10-13, San Diego http://www.powerpointlive.com

Hi Echo.

Thanks very much for your reply. I have the Catalyst 4.6 driver for my
9800pro and there is an update available to 4.7. According to the release
notes it doesn't address the problem I'm experiencing, but I'll try
installing it anyway. I'm gloomy about this resolving the problem as the 4.6
driver on my PC was only released in mid-May, but here's hoping! Thanks also
for reminding me about using system restore - I'm very much still getting to
grips with XP and I would have missed doing this.

Regards testing for the problem in safe mode, I tried this and the problem
remained. I checked my DirectX and it's already 9.0b.

Sincerely thanks again for your assistance,

Gary

 

[Gary]

Gary, no problem with the long post; in fact, that's exactly the way to do
this, since it saves everybody a lot of unnecessary Q/A. Thanks!

In addition to what the others have suggested, can you borrow another video
card (of the same or different type)? Or even purchase an inexpensive one (or
possibly revert to the motherboard's onboard video if it has it)?

If so, try that for a while. I'm thinking along the same lines as Geetesh's
suggestion re memory, only it struck me that it might be video memory instead.


--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

Hi Steve.

Thanks very much for the reply. I really appreciate the help.

To be honest I think that installing a new video card might be a bit beyond
me; but I'll have to give it a try if nothing else works! If it was the
video card though, why would Powerpoint be the only application that creates
the system instability? Definitely a most weird problem.

Thanks again,

Gary

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

That would be because PowerPoint might be the only application on your
system that needs to play full-screen shows that involve directly working
with the resolution?

In fact, if you have an empty hard disk partition, try installing Windows
again to that partition followed by PowerPoint - do the problems carry over?

--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html

Technical Specialist, PowerPoint Live
http://www.powerpointlive.com

 

[Sonia]

Gary, have you applied the Service Pack 1 to your Office 2003? Just curious
because it's one detail you haven't mentioned.

 

[Gary]

Gary, have you applied the Service Pack 1 to your Office 2003? Just curious
because it's one detail you haven't mentioned.
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials

Hi Sonia.

Sorry, I forgot to say that Office was fully patched. The problem was there
before and after SP1 for Office 2003. Thanks anyway though.

Gary

 

[Echo S]

Thanks very much for your reply. I have the Catalyst 4.6 driver for my
9800pro and there is an update available to 4.7. According to the release
notes it doesn't address the problem I'm experiencing, but I'll try
installing it anyway. I'm gloomy about this resolving the problem as the 4.6
driver on my PC was only released in mid-May, but here's hoping! Thanks also
for reminding me about using system restore - I'm very much still getting to
grips with XP and I would have missed doing this.

Oh, good. I was worried I was being a bit too pedantic there. But I know I
forget to use system restore sometimes, even though I've been using WinXP
for quite a while.

Regards testing for the problem in safe mode, I tried this and the problem
remained. I checked my DirectX and it's already 9.0b.

Hm. Since you see the issue in Safe Mode, too, it's probably not the video
driver, but it won't hurt to try updating -- especially since we now have
the system restore available! ;-)

Echo

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Hm. Since you see the issue in Safe Mode, too, it's probably not the video driver,
My thoughts exactly.

But no harm in trying to update them.

TAJ

 

[Gary]

That would be because PowerPoint might be the only application on your
system that needs to play full-screen shows that involve directly working
with the resolution?

In fact, if you have an empty hard disk partition, try installing Windows
again to that partition followed by PowerPoint - do the problems carry over?

--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html

Technical Specialist, PowerPoint Live
http://www.powerpointlive.com

Hi Geetesh.

Thanks for the information/ideas. I have no idea about how Powerpoint might
stress my system in comparison with other programs. I don't have any games
installed (which I assume might test the video card) but I do use my PC for
video editing, which I don't have any problems with, and I assumed might
flush out a hardware problem. Thanks for the suggestion regards partitions,
but I don't have one on my hard drive.

I have now tried swapping around my two sticks of ram in the mboard, but to
no avail. When I left the original stick in the first slot on its own the
system my computer booted normally (with 512 megs) but the same "freeze"
behaviour happened again in Powerpoint. When I tried the other stick of ram
on its own, my PC wouldn't boot (got an error about "overclocking failed" -
I don't/wouldn't overclock my PC so this confused me rather!). When I put
both sticks in together, the system boots normally, and everything is fine -
except for Powerpoint. Does this ram behaviour sound normal? I thought it
highly unlikely that both sticks of ram would be bad.

I'm currently in communication with another person from Microsoft who is
trying to help me. Amongst other things he suggested installing Direct X
9c - I didn't realise Powerpoint even used direct x.

Thanks again for your assistance,

Gary

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

It is not normal for the RAM to be not accepted that way - you might want to
change the RAM - but then again one cannot be sure if that will resolve the
problem. From past experience, I would think there might be something wrong
with the RAM. Since you have a new system, the RAM must be under warranty?
Why not speak to your hardware vendor and tell him that you want the RAM
changed.

On another front, do let us know if upgrading DirectX helped?

Wish we had a magic solution for you - and you got back saying it is all
working fine <g>.

--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html

Technical Specialist, PowerPoint Live
http://www.powerpointlive.com

 

[Gary]

It is not normal for the RAM to be not accepted that way - you might want to
change the RAM - but then again one cannot be sure if that will resolve the
problem. From past experience, I would think there might be something wrong
with the RAM. Since you have a new system, the RAM must be under warranty?
Why not speak to your hardware vendor and tell him that you want the RAM
changed.

On another front, do let us know if upgrading DirectX helped?

Wish we had a magic solution for you - and you got back saying it is all
working fine <g>.

--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html

Technical Specialist, PowerPoint Live
http://www.powerpointlive.com

Hmmm...maybe I should download a memory tester thing. I think Microsoft have
one you can download. If it is the ram I'll be sure to let you know.

Btw, unfortunately, upgrading to Direct x 9c made no difference.

Thanks again for your help,

Gary

 

[Gary]

This is just doing my head in.

I've now installed a piece of software (Burn-in) that tests all the system
components, and no errors were found whatsoever. I also installed
"ad-aware", just in case, but this also didn't throw up any problems.

What on earth could be left as an option for causing this problem???

I'm now going to *glare* at the PC for five minutes. Maybe I can scare
Powerpoint into working...