The memory could not be "written"

[chris gee]

I am running a AMD Athlon 800Mhz on an ASUS K7 Board, 30 GB HD, 384 MB RAM with XP and am getting a crippling error.......

The instruction at "0x77f53207" referenced memory at "0x00450056"
The memory could not be "written"
Click OK to terminate

This happens every time I open a folder with a large number of images, causing windows explorer to crash and close down. This happens when I am a FTP client and also select any folders with large numbers of images in which is crippling my work (web design)

I have tried swapping the RAM and the same thing happens, I have tried Norton Utilities to no avail.

I have searched the web and have found that this was a problem under WinNT which I presume was resolved with a service release.

If you have any ideas I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks in advance

Chris Geake
The Yellowroom
cg@theyellowroom.co.uk

[dhillier]

Certainly don't have a solution but I do share the problem on a slightly different system. The symptoms are about the same, with slight variations in the instruction and referenced memory addresses.

Similarities between your system and mine:
(1) 384 MB RAM running XP
(2) 30 MB hard drive (WDC WD300BB-00CCB0)
(3) the symptoms have persisted through memory swaps, though I haven't yet exhausted all combinations and permutations

Differences:
(1) 400 MHz Pentium II processor
(2) motherboard described as a "Tabor II"
(3) In some folders, Windows Explorer aborts with no message at all
(4) computer is dual boot with Windows 98 (no problems when I work from the Windows 98 side, but problem can occur on the FAT drive as well as the NTFS drive when running XP)
(5) Problem has persisted through a graphics card upgrade from a STB AGP with 8 MB RAM to a Radion 7000 with 64 MB RAM
(6) I can manipulate the files on the offending computer without any problems by running Windows Explorer in XP from a home networked Pentium III laptop with 256 MB RAM!

Other notes:
(1) Even when I'm in folders where the problem doesn't occur, thumbnail view responds erratically to mouse clicks, but I've assumed that is just a consequence of using XP on a computer that isn't very fast.
(2) Historically I installed and then uninstalled two different versions of ACDSee
(3) I run Extensis Portfolio

Will certainly broadcast a breakthrough if I find it.

Dave Hillier
dhillier@uwsp.edu

[chr1s]

Take a look at this Knowledge base article - it may help:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...EN-US;q137539&

It does mention Norton Antivirus as a possible cause and I noticed you mentioned that. Have a read and see if any of it matches up to your problem.

Chris.

[olsen.re]

Am having the same problem with Explorer crashing when viewing folders with images, usually crashes when in thumbnail viewing mode. Error message sometimes appears, same as Chris's post, except exact instruction and memory addresses are different. I have been working this on my machine for a while, started when the machine was Win2K OS, has continued with upgrade to XP Pro.

I suspect some graphics viewing software has contributed to the problem, as I have installed and uninstalled ACDSee on this machine, as well as Thumbs Plus and Adobe PS Elements, and have found some posts that suggest file association changes as a cause or at least contributing factor. Of course, I have other machines with these programs and don't have the Explorer crash problem, so cause is not clear.

My system:

PIII 866
512 Meg RAM
160 gig RAID array boot drive
Asus MB

My machine is XP upgrade, what about yours? May be a common thread concerning previous OS versions.

Here are a few links with information that I thought MIGHT be relevant to the problem. I've tried re-associating image types with IE as suggested in some of these articles, but this did not fix problem. Have not tried the FixPix.inf, as it is not clear that this is intended for XP.

My next steps are to try uninstalling some additional graphics viewing programs. If that doesn't work, will perhaps try FixPix, first setting a system restore point and Configsafe snapshot.

Let me know if you find any solutions.

Links with potentially related info. While the fixes have not worked for me, they do describe similar problems and have clues about possible causes:

PC 911 article with FixPix and other suggestions, have tried these, except FixPix, to no avail
http://www.pcnineoneone.com/tweaks/fixes1b.html

Infoworld article describing similar problem for Win2K, and fix that did not work
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op...livingston.xml

Update!

I just uninstalled Adobe Photoshop Elements v1, and this fixed the problem! I viewed folders in thumbnail view with hundreds of images successfully, and also ran some programs that were crashing when I'd try to select an image in the file open dialog. Works so far.

As I uninstalled PS Elements, I went through a number "delete shared file" confirmations. I noticed some files in a folder called Shell under the main Adobe folder, these looked like they provided the PS and AI icons to files in Explorer, I suspect they may have been part of the problem, though can't tell for sure.

Of course, the very bad news is can't run PS Elements on this machine now. I may try version 2, recently purchased, or may go to Ulead PhotoImpact 7. I'll first check Adobe's web site or related sites to see if there is recognition of this problem and a fix.

Hope this helps, let me know if you try something similar.

Robb.

[dhillier]

Noticed that my Windows Explorers meltdowns were occurring during a notably slow file-by-file shift of icons to Adobe PhotoShop graphics icons. So I uninstalled Adobe Photoshop 6.01 and my Windows Explorer graphics file browsing problems completely disappeared. Display of filenames, details, or thumbnails is now MUCH quicker, too.

I reinstalled PhotoShop WITHOUT making it the default application for JPEG, TIFF, nor GIF files, and now Windows Explorer and Adobe Photoshop appear to be living in harmony.

Being a great PhotoShop fan, I'm quite willing to believe that the problem was inherited from ACDSee, which established itself as default for a comprehensive range of graphics file types on installation. ACDSee didn't stay on my system long, for both the original and an updated release turned out to be quite incompatable with Windows Explorer in my configuration. Windows XP was new to me at the time, and I didn't realize that it already contained most of the services I'd enjoyed running ACDSee on Windows98.

Or perhaps the problem originated with a subsequent installation of Portfolio 6 (which is when I first noticed it, but that is also the first time I started working with large numbers of graphics files on the affected computer). Installing a Portfolio 6 update cut down on the incidence of Explorer crashes, but removing Porfolio completely did not solve the problem. I have yet to try reinstalling Portfolio, but am optimistic.

Or maybe the problem really was a PhotoShop/Windows XP glitch. More later only if problems come back.

[chris gee]

I think ACDSee is unrelated as I have never installed it.
I think it is definatley a photoshop issue.
I do not have photoshop elements but am now running photoshop 7, this I upgraded to see if it helped but to no avail.
Its a bit of a drag not havimng pshop set as the default for jpg though!
I will keep looking...
Thanks
CG

[miked14]

i've had similar problems to those shown in this thread on a couple of windows machines (one XP the other 2000). It seems the problem gets worse the more files there are in a folder and the more there are on the machine in total. Even with a new machine (1gb memory, fast processor, 50gb+ hard disk space). It seems that however fast the machine is it still more or less grinds to a halt if you have a large number of image files in the folders. Suspect it must simply be the bit of windows that deals with this is not up to the job - all it has to do is find the right bit of the cache to display on screen, how hard can that be?

[FarekSikar]

Im having the same problem and I've got Adobe Photoshop 7.0 installed.

If I look carefully I can see when the small icons turns into the Adobe icons, as I just clicked the folder, it crashes after a few has successfuly changed.

What I find strange is that if I copy the folder to another location it works fine...

All fixed itself when I uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe but this time I selected NC(No Change) on all association.

[cedwards1]

I had an almost identical problem on my system. If I open up one of my hard drive partitions (the E: drive) that I store movies or video clips on it causes windows to crash with an unknown error. I found out that if I take a folder out of it right before it crashes to my desktop then that folder will work normal. I was able to narrow down to a certain folder that was crashing it due to a corrupted file. The corrupted file I was later told by a technician was causing Windows Media Player to crash under a "fatal error".
I ended up installing PowerDVD and disabled Windows Media Player and it seems to have cleared up the issue.
I hope this could be of some help.

[sergiomcfly]

----- FORGET ANYTHING YOU HAVE DID -----

Here is the SOLUTION:

Change the Video Card

--------------------------------------------

[pip22]

Originally Posted by sergiomcfly

----- FORGET ANYTHING YOU HAVE DID -----

Here is the SOLUTION:

Change the Video Card

--------------------------------------------

Thanks for your contribution. However, while that may have worked for you it does not necessarily mean it will work for others with the same error. If you 'Google' the error you'll see that there is no single panacea for this. Encouraging people to buy a new video card and, hey presto! problem solved, may prove less than helpful.

For example, i used to get that error. In my case it was caused by errors in some program code in an adobe application which I've since uninstalled. Error gone -- same video card.