a harmless notebook crashes Windows 7: who else had it?
in [Mathematica]
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From: Alexei Boulbitch on 5 Feb 2010 07:13 *Dear Community, I have recently installed Mathematica 7.0.1.0 (the Premier Service - related Home Edition) on my laptop (ASER Aspire 4810TG with Windows 7 Home Edition). I faced a problem that started to show up right after the installation of Mathematica: Windows crashes always, if I open a certain notebook and scroll it for few seconds. The notebook in question is a draft of my lecture and contains mainly a text (e.g. text cells) and some short and very primitive pieces of code. To give few examples of the code from that notebook look here: *1 - 3 \[Nu] /. \[Nu] -> 3/5 *or here: *f = (T*c)/\[CapitalNu]*Log[c/(\[CapitalNu]*E)] + B*c^2 + \[DoubleStruckCapitalC]*c^3; \[Mu]p = \[CapitalNu]*\!\( \*SubscriptBox[\(\[PartialD]\), \(c\)]\ f\) // FunctionExpand // Expand Posm = c*\!\( \*SubscriptBox[\(\[PartialD]\), \(c\)]\ f\) - f // Expand *or here *Panel(a)Style[ "Some text to be highlighted", 16, Blue, Bold] *There are some other pieces of a code of the same type in that notebook. The code seems to be quite harmless. However, Windows crashes and restarts. Another thing that crashes Windows in the same manner is launching the Outlook Express. This also started to happen first after the installation of Mathematica. Other notebooks as well as other applications seem to work well. I checked for viruses with NOD32, seems to be no of them. The same "criminal" notebook is running fine on another machine with Windows XP and the same Mathematica version. On this machine I did not face any problem with this version of Mathemactica (at least, not yet). My question: Did somebody of you already experience things of this type, and what did you do in this case? Best regards, Alexei * -- Alexei Boulbitch, Dr., habil. Senior Scientist IEE S.A. ZAE Weiergewan 11, rue Edmond Reuter L-5326 Contern Luxembourg Phone: +352 2454 2566 Fax: +352 2454 3566 Website: www.iee.lu This e-mail may contain trade secrets or privileged, undisclosed or otherwise confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient and have received this e-mail in error, you are hereby notified that any review, copying or distribution of it is strictly prohibited. Please inform us immediately and destroy the original transmittal from your system. Thank you for your co-operation.
From: John Fultz on 6 Feb 2010 03:23 If Windows is blue-screening, which seems to be what you're saying, then it's not Mathematica's fault...at least not directly. No regular application has the privilege to do anything that would cause Windows to blue-screen. A blue-screen happens when privileged code running in core parts of the operating system fails, and the operating system is unable to contain the crash. Typically, it's a result of a bug in Windows itself, or a bug in a device driver which Windows is using. It could also, as you've already speculated, be the result of malware. That being said, I can toss out one speculation. We've seen a very small number of cases where the presence of the Mathematica5 fonts on the system can cause certain applications (not just Mathematica) to trigger a blue-screen. We haven't gotten to the bottom of this, yet...and it's only been reported to us by three users. I personally suspect that there's a flaky video driver behind the problem, but I don't have the evidence to back up such an assertion, yet. On the off-chance that the problem you're seeing is the same problem, try following this procedure... * Quit all copies of Mathematica. * Open the Fonts control panel. Make copies of all of the Mathematica5 fonts, then remove them from the Fonts list. * Reboot. Open the Fonts control panel again and verify that no Mathematica5 fonts are there. * Launch Mathematica and perform the procedure which reproduces the blue-screen. * You may see some characters which display incorrectly on the screen. That's okay. If this makes the problem go away, then I'd really like to get some more information from you, and I can offer you some practical advice for working around the problem. Feel free to email me directly with the results of your test. If that doesn't help, then you should reinstall the Mathematica5 fonts. They can be found in the installation directory in SystemFiles\FrontEnd\Fonts\Windows. Send me a copy of the crash report that Windows creates, and I may be able to suggest other things you can try. -John On Fri, 5 Feb 2010 07:13:30 -0500 (EST), Alexei Boulbitch wrote: > *Dear Community, > > I have recently installed Mathematica 7.0.1.0 (the Premier Service - > related Home Edition) on my laptop (ASER Aspire 4810TG with Windows 7 > Home Edition). I faced a problem that started to show up right after the > installation of Mathematica: > > Windows crashes always, if I open a certain notebook and scroll it for > few seconds. The notebook in question is a draft of my lecture and > contains mainly a text (e.g. text cells) and some short and very > primitive pieces of code. To give few examples of the code from that > notebook look here: > > *1 - 3 \[Nu] /. \[Nu] -> 3/5 > > *or here: > > *f = (T*c)/\[CapitalNu]*Log[c/(\[CapitalNu]*E)] + > B*c^2 + \[DoubleStruckCapitalC]*c^3; > \[Mu]p = \[CapitalNu]*\!\( > \*SubscriptBox[\(\[PartialD]\), \(c\)]\ f\) // FunctionExpand // Expand > Posm = c*\!\( > \*SubscriptBox[\(\[PartialD]\), \(c\)]\ f\) - f // Expand > > *or here > > *Panel(a)Style[ > "Some text to be highlighted", 16, Blue, Bold] > > *There are some other pieces of a code of the same type in that > notebook. The code seems to be quite harmless. However, Windows crashes > and restarts. Another thing that crashes Windows in the same manner is > launching the Outlook Express. This also started to happen first after > the installation of Mathematica. > > Other notebooks as well as other applications seem to work well. I > checked for viruses with NOD32, seems to be no of them. The same > "criminal" notebook is running fine on another machine with Windows XP > and the same Mathematica version. On this machine I did not face any > problem with this version of Mathemactica (at least, not yet). > > My question: > Did somebody of you already experience things of this type, and what did > you do in this case? > > Best regards, Alexei > > *
From: David Bailey on 9 Feb 2010 02:49 John Fultz wrote: > If Windows is blue-screening, which seems to be what you're saying, then it's > not Mathematica's fault...at least not directly. No regular application has the > privilege to do anything that would cause Windows to blue-screen. A blue-screen > happens when privileged code running in core parts of the operating system > fails, and the operating system is unable to contain the crash. Typically, it's > a result of a bug in Windows itself, or a bug in a device driver which Windows > is using. It could also, as you've already speculated, be the result of > malware. > > That being said, I can toss out one speculation. We've seen a very small number > of cases where the presence of the Mathematica5 fonts on the system can cause > certain applications (not just Mathematica) to trigger a blue-screen. We > haven't gotten to the bottom of this, yet...and it's only been reported to us by > three users. I personally suspect that there's a flaky video driver behind the > problem, but I don't have the evidence to back up such an assertion, yet. > > On the off-chance that the problem you're seeing is the same problem, try > following this procedure... > > * Quit all copies of Mathematica. > * Open the Fonts control panel. Make copies of all of the Mathematica5 fonts, > then remove them from the Fonts list. > * Reboot. Open the Fonts control panel again and verify that no Mathematica5 > fonts are there. > * Launch Mathematica and perform the procedure which reproduces the blue-screen. > * You may see some characters which display incorrectly on the screen. That's > okay. > > If this makes the problem go away, then I'd really like to get some more > information from you, and I can offer you some practical advice for working > around the problem. Feel free to email me directly with the results of your > test. > > If that doesn't help, then you should reinstall the Mathematica5 fonts. They > can be found in the installation directory in > SystemFiles\FrontEnd\Fonts\Windows. Send me a copy of the crash report that > Windows creates, and I may be able to suggest other things you can try. > > -John > > > On Fri, 5 Feb 2010 07:13:30 -0500 (EST), Alexei Boulbitch wrote: >> *Dear Community, >> >> I have recently installed Mathematica 7.0.1.0 (the Premier Service - >> related Home Edition) on my laptop (ASER Aspire 4810TG with Windows 7 >> Home Edition). I faced a problem that started to show up right after the >> installation of Mathematica: >> >> Windows crashes always, if I open a certain notebook and scroll it for >> few seconds. The notebook in question is a draft of my lecture and >> contains mainly a text (e.g. text cells) and some short and very >> primitive pieces of code. To give few examples of the code from that >> notebook look here: >> >> *1 - 3 \[Nu] /. \[Nu] -> 3/5 >> >> *or here: >> >> *f = (T*c)/\[CapitalNu]*Log[c/(\[CapitalNu]*E)] + >> B*c^2 + \[DoubleStruckCapitalC]*c^3; >> \[Mu]p = \[CapitalNu]*\!\( >> \*SubscriptBox[\(\[PartialD]\), \(c\)]\ f\) // FunctionExpand // Expand >> Posm = c*\!\( >> \*SubscriptBox[\(\[PartialD]\), \(c\)]\ f\) - f // Expand >> >> *or here >> >> *Panel(a)Style[ >> "Some text to be highlighted", 16, Blue, Bold] >> >> *There are some other pieces of a code of the same type in that >> notebook. The code seems to be quite harmless. However, Windows crashes >> and restarts. Another thing that crashes Windows in the same manner is >> launching the Outlook Express. This also started to happen first after >> the installation of Mathematica. >> >> Other notebooks as well as other applications seem to work well. I >> checked for viruses with NOD32, seems to be no of them. The same >> "criminal" notebook is running fine on another machine with Windows XP >> and the same Mathematica version. On this machine I did not face any >> problem with this version of Mathemactica (at least, not yet). >> >> My question: >> Did somebody of you already experience things of this type, and what did >> you do in this case? >> >> Best regards, Alexei >> >> * > > > I wonder what version of Mathematica was in use before 7 was installed, because I remember a problem similar to this when I first installed 6.0. The problem turned out to be a bug in the Dell screen driver, and upgrading this from their website fixed the problem. David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk
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