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Re: Help: General Protection Fault caused by Mathematica for Windows

  • To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
  • Subject: [mg1117] Re: Help: General Protection Fault caused by Mathematica for Windows
  • From: rubin at msu.edu (Paul A. Rubin)
  • Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 01:31:44 -0400
  • Organization: Michigan State University

In article <3ov06r$995 at news0.cybernetics.net>,
   ddonne at expert.cc.purdue.edu (David Donne) wrote:
->
->Expert Readers of This Group:

That lets me out, but won't deter me.  :-)

->
->   Please help me with the following General Protection Fault problem.
->
->   I always get General Protection Fault message when I run Mathematica
->on my 486DX2/50 on some occasions. Specifically, I tried to expand
->(1+x)^150 in Mathematica and I got the following message:
->
-> First message:  Application Error: Math caused a general protection 
->                 fault in module 256_1024.drv at 0002:48FA. Close or
->                 Ignore?
->
-> When I tried to close, a second message came up:
->
-> Second message: EMM386 has deteced error #6 in an application at
->                 memory address 00B8:0BA0. ...EMM386 has haulted your 
->		 computer.
->
-> Note: When I expanded (1+x)^140, there was no problem. My computer is
->       a Packard Bell 486DX2/50 with 8MB of RAM. The Windows swapfile
->       is 20MB (Windows recommends ~24MB). The video driver is Cirrus
->       Logic GL5424 Version 1.43. Windows version is Windows for 
->       Workgroups v3.11. Math version is Math v2.2.1 for Windows.
->       This is the only GPF I got for all the programs on my computer.

Wow!  I get GPFs or their siblings ("Your system has become busy or 
unstable...") all too frequently.

->       At the time it happened, Mathematica reported there was ~6000K 
->       memory available.
->
->       The relavent lines in CONFIG.SYS:
->           DEVICE=C:\windows\himem.sys
->           DEVICE=C:\windows\emm386.sys ram  
->
-> What could be the problem? How to fix it? Any info would be greatly
-> appreciated.
->
->
->David Donne
->Purdue University
->ddonne at expert.cc.purdue.edu

This is just a guess, since I don't have a Cirrus video card, but the name 
256_1024.drv sounds like a hi-res video driver (.drv being the extension 
Windoze prefers for drivers).  Maybe Mma got to the point of composing your 
output for display and hemorrhaged (or caused the video driver to do so) 
due to the sheer length of the output.  The second message is probably a 
cascade effect of the first problem - something may have messed with a 
piece of allegedly protected memory it wasn't supposed to touch.  You can 
test this hypothesis by evaluating

   junk = (1+x)^150;

which will do the same calculation but (courtesy of the semicolon) suppress 
printing of the result.

Paul

**************************************************************************
* Paul A. Rubin                                  Phone: (517) 432-3509   *
* Department of Management                       Fax:   (517) 432-1111   *
* Eli Broad Graduate School of Management        Net:   RUBIN at MSU.EDU    *
* Michigan State University                                              *
* East Lansing, MI  48824-1122  (USA)                                    *
**************************************************************************
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen:  whenever you say something to them,
they translate it into their own language, and at once it is something
entirely different.                                    J. W. v. GOETHE


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