Windows 95 Freeze-Up Tip  

This involves one of the most frequently frustrating problemswith Windows 95, especially for those with Pentium computers. II firstdiscovered the solution through my own trial and error.  After upgradingfrom a 486/66 to a Pentium 166  I was experiencing  freeze-ups,associated mainly with mouse movement on scroll bars  or other combinationsof mouse with 3-D buttons. It would also happen with file transfers, whenthe "cute" little file folders are flying through the air. The screen wouldfreeze completely.  Even the venerable "Three Finger Salute" (Cntrl-Alt-Del)wouldn't work.  The only way out was to hit the reboot button, loseany unsaved data, and hope no files or--worse--the Win95 Registry didn'tget corrupted.   

I spent weeks troubleshooting, trying every possible diagnosis,including upgrading the video card and driver, upgrading the kernel32.dllfile,  experimenting with different swap-file settings, experimentingwith different BIOS settings associated with video,  upgrading themouse driver, downgrading the mouse driver, even buying and trying a differentmouse, different video resolutions, etc. etc.  Nothing worked. Except...   

Turning off the graphics acceleration of Windows95.   

This is found under Control Panel/System/Performance. Choose the Advance Settings/Graphics button.  There under AdvancedGraphics Settings will be Hardware Acceleration.  The defaultsetting is Full.  There are three lower settings, the lowestbeing None, with a message "Use this setting only if your computerfrequently stops responding or has other severe problems."  Thisis the setting you want.  Choose it, and then re-boot.   

(BTW, I tried the two higher settings first, one of whichhas to do with correcting problems with the mouse pointer, but the onlything that worked for me was None.)   

This has corected the freeze-ups. Occasionally, they return,and every time, if I check, I'll find that the Hardware Acceleration hasbeen moved up again, by some program I recently installed.  Returningit to None corrects the problem again.   

I discussed this with Microsoft Support, and they agreedwith my theory that this feature of Windows 95 is for people who have slowersystems to begin with.  Setting to Full speeds up their graphics asif they were running a faster system.  But with higher Pentiums, thesystem is already running at full blast, and accelerating makes it toofast, vis-a-vis the graphics card.   They also said that it reallydoesn't affect performance that much by running it at None on a fast system,and I have found this to be true.   

Technically, it sets Win95 to use only the DIB enginerather than bit block transfers for displaying images, and reduces graphicsredraw.  There's more to it, too, but this info can be found in theMicrosoft Windows 95Resource Kit.    

So far, numerous people who have gotten this tip fromme in the alt.windows95 newsgroup havereported back that it solves their problem.  Typically, Microsoftdoesn't address it directly, and most people at MS Support know nothingabout it.  Worse, consumers buying new computers may experience freeze-ups,and no one can help them correct it...not the store they boughtit from, or the computer manufacturer, or most technicians.  A casein point:  Just last week, mynephews bought a new Sony computer.  A nice-looking machine, withPentium 200, 32 megs EDO RAM, high-end video card...the works!  Rightout of the box, after a few hours of use, it began to freeze-up! A call to the store resulted in them re-installing everything from an "emergency"CD.  It still froze up.   As soon as I heard about theirproblem, I changed the Graphics Acceleration...and the problem was solved.    

It truly is a shame that so many people will be frustratedby this, especially with new Pentium machines, when the situation couldbe eliminated by simply making None the default setting.