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lahey@ims.
USA
1 Posts |
 Posted - 02/20/2002 : 4:41:50 PM
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| For some time I had almost consistent crashes when doing a "custom tick label" routine such as showing special ticks. Going through Format|Axis Type or Format|Axis Tick Labels {rather than double clicking on the axis to get to the axis dialog box} and saving faithfully every other step helped some, but I found that changing the setting of the computer display to small fonts helped even more. So, check the display settings of the font, and when using large font, try using small font instead. |
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Mike
USA
357 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2002 : 1:43:55 PM
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Thank you for your post. While it is certainly true that program instability can be caused by a glitch in our code (crashes are reproduced on a variety of systems), most Origin crashes are due to a combination of factors -- most notably incorrect system DLLs (rarely), video driver (rarely), or print driver conflicts (most commonly). While we test Origin extensively with a variety of hardware and software combinations prior to releasing a product, the diversity of hardware/software combinations and ever-changing standards can make it very difficult to identify areas of program instability, particularly when we are not able reproduce the problem in-house.
When a customer calls Tech Support and reports a crash, it is standard procedure for us to ask the customer to read through our Knowledge Base item on Troubleshooting after a crash. In the majority of cases, we find that program instability is linked to one of the three aforementioned factors.
You don't mention when you began having this problem (what version of Origin you were using at the time). When I mentioned your post to a senior engineer, here, he recalled that there were have been some problems associated with the Custom Tick Labels tab of the Axis dialog, though he also mentioned that many of them have been cleared up in later (post 5.0) versions of Origin.
We were a bit curious about your "treatment" -- that is, changing your Windows Control Panel Display settings to use Small Fonts. We were wondering whether this might indicate an Origin + video driver conflict of some sort. What you may want to do is to make certain that you are using the most up-to-date video driver available for your particular display card. (BTW, we find that most Origin + video driver problems occur on laptop computers for whatever reason).
Thanks again,
Mike Genthner
Originlab Technical Support |
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Jose
Netherlands
93 Posts |
Posted - 03/05/2002 : 12:00:38 PM
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MS-Windows is a mysterious system.
I have sometimes solved some crashes by changing curious configurations like that: size of display fonts, or something apparently innocuous in the default printer driver...
After my experience, more than the parameter that you change (and that you may believe is important), other things may be the real cause of the new working condition. (For example, I think that if you, lahey, go back now to the previous large fonts configuration, it will also work). What is important in most cases is to force Windows to reset configuration: by changing some parameters of a driver you force the OS to reload or reset the driver (or who knows what other things), that may have been spoiled by other programs or the OS itself. In most cases (always after my personal experience) updating the drivers to a newer version is not really necessary: your crash ploblem may be solved simply re-installing the current ones.
I believe that is a problem for Origin developers to deal with all Windows quirks...
- Jose Via
Origin WebRing member |
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Mike
USA
357 Posts |
Posted - 03/05/2002 : 5:08:47 PM
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Thanks for the input Jose. I will remember your advice that sometimes reinstalling the current driver may be enough.
Mike |
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Using small fonts could avoid some crashes