SP2 update cause slideshow freezing

[Humbleuser]

Hey everyone, I have a very strange problem recently that I cannot find any
clue googling. After update PowerPoint 2003 with SP2, the slideshow will
occationally freeze completely rendering the whole PC not responding. Only a
hard shut down and reboot will bring the system back. I have got this occur
to three times now. Everytime it involves using a projector and showing the
slide on both the PC monitor and the projector. There is no sign of it and
it will simply happen, one time when I scrolled the slide back and then
forth, once when I get out of the show and then back in using alt+tab, and
another time it just stopped responding. I'm an instructor teaching class,
so this is a bit of both embarrassing and inconvenient. Anyone has any idea
what cause it and how to correct it?

 

[Kathy Jacobs]

Thanks for providing your PPT version - that helps a lot. It could be a wide
range of things, so stick with me a moment and check some things out...

First thing that comes to mind is your virus checker. If you are using
Norton, turn off the Office add-in and that might help.

You might also see if things like cleaning up temp space and defragging the
hard drive help.

If neither of these clear it up, see if there is something in common with
the slides or presentations that are causing the hang? Things to look for
here would be things like an element that came from the web or something
that takes a long time to render. If the hang happens when you try to go to
another presentation, it could be something wrong with that presentation.

Try some of this and let us all know if it helps....

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP PowerPoint and OneNote
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint - Available now from Holy Macro! Books
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Humbleuser]

Thanks a lot for a quick reply! Now let me clarify something. First, I'm
using a corporate version of Norton, and there is no way to turn off office
add-in. Besides, the freezing is a very recent thing, so I don't think it's
because of that. All freezing accurred right in the middle of slide show and
I was going to another presentation. There was not advanced animation or
sound, video clips involved, just the plain text slide show. I'll try
cleaning the temp space and defrag the hard drive. I do both fairly
frequently though. My own guess is that this probabily has something to do
with the performance improvement coming with the SP2. I'll update the
situation.

 

[Kathy Jacobs]

Actually, hearing that you have corporate Norton installed makes me think it
is Norton even more - it is the version (second only to System Works) where
my clients have had the most problems....

That said, the fact that it happens when you are going to another
presentation leads me to believe that the other presentation may have
problems. Does PPT hang when you open the other presentation directly?

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP PowerPoint and OneNote
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint - Available now from Holy Macro! Books
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Humbleuser]

I just found that I meant "I was NOT going to another presentation." I forgot
to type in the word "not." Sorry about that. So you think it's Norton. How
can we test it though?

 

[Kathy Jacobs]

I am not sure how to test whether it is really Norton or not. For the
clients who have had this problem in the past, the only way we knew it was
Norton was because the problem went away when Norton's Office hooks were
turned off.

Is there anything else running on the machine when this happens? For
example: Might your email client be trying to "call home" or some other
background process eating time?

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP PowerPoint and OneNote
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint - Available now from Holy Macro! Books
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Humbleuser]

I'm using a college-own laptop when teaching. Thus I don't have much control
over it. It does not have much program running in the back group. I have
just discovered a way to somewhat shut off the norton hook. In the corporate
version, there is a way to set up exemption rule so Norton anti-virus is not
called when certain files are opened. Let's see if this will help. I'm
still thinking about the SP2 because such an sudden death is not likely the
fault of Norton, but more likely a graphic/video issue. Slide show uses a
lot of graphic features to enable animation and smooth transition of slides,
I'm wondering about that now.

 

[Humbleuser]

I had just discovered that due to the network-wise server issue, my computer
being a network client wasn't able to run login and logoff script that were
preset by administrator for a couple of days. This eventually causes
corruptions in my user profile and then mysterious freezing events regardless
the programs I was running. Although I'm not completely sure, I believe it
was also the reason that crashed my slideshows. My profile has since been
rebuilt and I'll see if the sudden death is gone.