21st September 2000
Coming from the "Crash Test Smarties" department, Lockergnomie Dan Cursio may have a solution for frequent application failures. Rock-a-bye Windows, on the Desktop. When the app breaks, the OS will crash. "Illegal Operation? Has a disk doctor been performing surgery on my system without a license again?" When Microsoft Word is failing frequently, consider deleting the NORMAL.DOT file. Typically found in the WINDOWS \ Application Data \ Microsoft \ Templates folder, a quick Search (F3) will uncover its location on your drive. Okay, but what about other programs? When was the last time you deleted your swap file (WIN386.SWP)? If you're running into KERNEL32.DLL errors, consider dropping into MS-DOS mode and deleting WIN386.SWP from the command prompt. This will effectively clean out previously swapped code which may have been causing system instability. Windows will create a new swap file automatically before its next session.
I'll take this time
to remind you of four very important rules:
1) ALWAYS perform a BACKUP before venturing into the unknown (or known, for
that matter);
2) your mileage may vary;
3) if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it without being prepared to
face the consequences;
4) don't delete files unless you know they can be deleted safely (move them
to a temporary location elsewhere on your computer before erasing them permanently).