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Freezing of the WPS

Started by Carlo_Warp, 2007.12.19, 21:59:32

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Carlo_Warp

I got many times freezing of the WPS when surfing the Internet with eCS RC1. It happened only with Firefox, Mozilla and Seamonkey

I had the same problem with the Italian version of eCS: 1.2R

Such big problem is making me reluctant of purchasing the Software Subscription again.

Here is my Hardware:

Amd Duron 800 Mhz
1 Gbyte DDR RAM
Motherboard Asus A7N8X-X with Nvidia Nforce 2 Chipset
GeForce 4 MX Video Card
Logitech USB optical mouse

Any help will be immensly appreciated!

DavidG

What versions of the programs are you using?  How were they installed? with the installer or extracted from zip and installed manually?

Carlo_Warp

I am using Firefox 2.0.0.4 (the one installed by eCS 2.0 RC1). I removed the SCSI controller 2940 UW2, but it didn't help. I don't remember the versions of Seamonkey and Mozilla. Believe me, it is a very annoying problem!

Quote from: David Graser on 2007.12.19, 22:02:43
What versions of the programs are you using?  How were they installed? with the installer or extracted from zip and installed manually?

RobertM

Firefox (any recent build) will do that - especially on certain pages or certain conditions, such as (but not limited to):

  • Waiting for gMail to load it's scripts
  • Initializing Java (v1.4.2?)
  • Laoding pages with certain Flash content in them

The only thing that I've tried that alleviates it is using an SMP machine with SMP enabled in OS/2 - and even then, there is a slight wait before OS/2 will take control away. This will also work with non-SMP - but reacts much slower (if at all).

There was a utility floating around someplace that decreased the priority of Mozilla but I have not tried it to see if it alleviates the problem (and I am not sure if it works with new builds).

Sorry I cant be of more help on this...

-Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Carlo_Warp

Perhaps is related to Java, who knows. It happened with all web sites up to now. If you know the utility's name, it would be useful.

At the moment I don't want to upgrade my pc (mainboard, processor, ram). I want to install only a faster processor (AMD Athlon 1533 Mhz).

Quote from: RobertM on 2007.12.19, 22:34:58
Firefox (any recent build) will do that - especially on certain pages or certain conditions, such as (but not limited to):

  • Waiting for gMail to load it's scripts
  • Initializing Java (v1.4.2?)
  • Laoding pages with certain Flash content in them

The only thing that I've tried that alleviates it is using an SMP machine with SMP enabled in OS/2 - and even then, there is a slight wait before OS/2 will take control away. This will also work with non-SMP - but reacts much slower (if at all).

There was a utility floating around someplace that decreased the priority of Mozilla but I have not tried it to see if it alleviates the problem (and I am not sure if it works with new builds).

Sorry I cant be of more help on this...

-Robert

melf

That sounds annoying. I don't have the problem myself. A few things comes to mind:

1. Certain flashcontent as Robert says sometimes freeze or just shut down FF. A cure is to use "flashblock" add on and just watch the flash:es you want to watch.

2. There has been a discussion on news.ecomstation.com regarding Innotek font engine. Seems like it has been downgraded to the 2.40 version in latest releases of eCS (I don't know if RC1 is concerned, but it could be). This version is said to be known to cause freeezings. A cure is to upgrade to 2.60 beta.

3. If you don't find a solution you ought to report it as a bug (first check out existing), its just to much to tolerate.
/Mikael

RobertM

#6
Java shouldnt cause this issue unless there is a Java Plugin/app on the page you are viewing. I did just remember something else that definitely caused this issue for me (and made Firefox pretty unusable and horrendously slow). That something is various themes for Firefox - most especially in my experience the Vista/Aero ones - but various others as well.

I think I had the most success with one of the Orbit themes and a couple others. The differences ranged from the browser being horrendously slow to do anything (load a page, display a page, switch tabs, etc) - to the browser's UI (and with some themes, OS/2's GUI) becoming unusable/unresponsive.

Another issue (with Flash) is often the version of the plugin you are using - or whether something else (or another instance of Flash) has the sound card locked when a sound playing flash file is loaded. I get temporary hangs in the GUI (when FF hangs), to "permanent" hangs in both).

I've found (just recently - after having previously restarted each time) that doing something to take focus away from FF usually works after a little bit of a delay (one that exceeds the setting in OS/) - most success with CTRL-ESC/ALT-ESC combinations.

My biggest issue was on some occassions, shutting down FF or PMw-Fx would hang it (any build since at least 2.0.01). I got tired of rebooting, so madly hit CTRL-ESC and/or ALT-ESC (first tries switching to the task switcher app - ie: "Window List" and the second tries switching to a different program). After waiting 5-20 seconds, OS/2 responds with an "unknown process #____" is not responding... (and invariably with JUST an "OK" button to kill it - no cancel button). Selecting OK kills the remnants of FF, frees its memory and all is good.

Anyway, if I remember the name of the utility (NICE maybe?), I'll let you know.

I'm hopeful for a Cairo based build of FF someday soon... I truly think a lot of the issues are with the screen rendering code...


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Saijin_Naib

The phoenity modern theme only slows down Firefox a little, atleast in my testing.

RobertM

Quote from: melf on 2007.12.19, 23:22:19
... A cure is to upgrade to 2.60 beta.


Any chance you know where that may be available? Innotek seems to have removed everything from their web pages and FTP server... :-(

Thanks,
-Rob


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Eugene Tucker

Well I hope this information will help many I had these freezes and for the life of me I could not figure it out. Well it occurred to me that I was using a Firefox skin and that it locked up every time I used Firefox regardless of the version.Well it turns out that I went back to the default Firefox theme and dropped the skin I was using for Firefox. And I have not had one lockup since.

Saijin_Naib

You can search for the Innotek Font Runtime in whatever search engine you use and find the pages with the Innotek OS/2 offerings. They are still up, just not a part of the pages anymore.

http://www.innotek.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=44&lang=en

RobertM

Much thanks Saijin_Naib! :)

Will give it a try.

-Rob


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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melf

Quote from: Eugene Tucker on 2007.12.20, 01:41:17
Well I hope this information will help many I had these freezes and for the life of me I could not figure it out. Well it occurred to me that I was using a Firefox skin and that it locked up every time I used Firefox regardless of the version.Well it turns out that I went back to the default Firefox theme and dropped the skin I was using for Firefox. And I have not had one lockup since.
Had forgotten that. Haven't used skins for long now and the reason was just what you mention.
/Mikael

Carlo_Warp

Thank you, I got the Innotek Font Engine 2.60. Shall I install it over the current version just by double clicking on it?

I have to look for Flashblock as well.


Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2007.12.20, 02:11:45
You can search for the Innotek Font Runtime in whatever search engine you use and find the pages with the Innotek OS/2 offerings. They are still up, just not a part of the pages anymore.

http://www.innotek.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=44&lang=en

Carlo_Warp

A few interesting things:

I installed Flashblock and I clicked on a Flash animation to watch it and I got a system freeze. That's why I thought the problem are Flash animations!

After the reboot, I got Chekdisk of the JFS volumes, but after having loaded the SNAP driver I got the mouse's cursor stuck on the screen.

Now it is impossible to have a working system.

Quote from: melf on 2007.12.19, 23:22:19
That sounds annoying. I don't have the problem myself. A few things comes to mind:

1. Certain flashcontent as Robert says sometimes freeze or just shut down FF. A cure is to use "flashblock" add on and just watch the flash:es you want to watch.

2. There has been a discussion on news.ecomstation.com regarding Innotek font engine. Seems like it has been downgraded to the 2.40 version in latest releases of eCS (I don't know if RC1 is concerned, but it could be). This version is said to be known to cause freeezings. A cure is to upgrade to 2.60 beta.

3. If you don't find a solution you ought to report it as a bug (first check out existing), its just to much to tolerate.