PPT lockup on DELL X300

[buckeyejgt]

My brand new Dell X300 notebook with WinXP locks up everytime while running a PowerPoint slideshow. After some time, regardless of whether or not the slideshow is being advanced regularly or very intermittently, a click will not be recognized, and the whole thing is locked up. CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing, ALT-TAB does nothing, it must be turned off by pushing and holding the power button. This never happens on my Gateway desktop (with WinXP), nor did it ever happen on a Gateway laptop (Win98.)

Can anyone try to duplicate or give advice? All updates have been installed, by the way.

Thanks.

 

[B]

You should start with the basics. Here is a link of stuff to begin with:
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00034.htm

Some of these things can lock a system up, even a SOTA system.

B

My brand new Dell X300 notebook with WinXP locks up everytime while

running a PowerPoint slideshow. After some time, regardless of whether or
not the slideshow is being advanced regularly or very intermittently, a
click will not be recognized, and the whole thing is locked up.
CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing, ALT-TAB does nothing, it must be turned off by
pushing and holding the power button. This never happens on my Gateway
desktop (with WinXP), nor did it ever happen on a Gateway laptop (Win98.)

 

[John O]

Can anyone try to duplicate or give advice? All updates have been

installed, by the way.

You're referring to BIOS and other drivers at Dell's website? If not, get
them. If you do have them all, and the FAQ doesn't help, you'll have to
narrow this down to Ppt or something else.

If you want a much more stable system, then format the drive and reinstall
everything. Not the easiest solution, but it works and you don't end up with
all those ridiculous utilities and junk.

John O

 

[Echo S]

In addition to the other suggestions, you might try updating your
version of Direct X. I know there's an issue with the mouse falling over
dead with MPEG files, and it's related to Direct X.

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;EN-US;Q295810

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;EN-US;Q285439 might be worth a
look, too.