The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[stevep4]

Occasionally when I load Sudoku, all is well and the program appears to load fully...except when I try to stat a new game, the clock starts, but no grid appears on the screen. It remains the background.


Exit and restat Sudoku does not work. The only thin that does is reboot the computer (Win Xp SP2).

No other program on the computer has any problems, only Sudoku.
Any ideas? (I am running 1.0.03)

[Hud]

I have the same problem, but it occurs in many areas for me. I believe it has something to do with the number of processes running on the computer, and I don't know how to remove the unnecessary ones. Shutting down and restarting is a pain, but doesn't take very long.

I've heard that when you do "alt-cntl-del" then select "processes, you shouldn't have more than around 25 processes running. I hope someone who knows about this will ring in.

[Son of Pappocom]

Evidently I don't know enough, I'm afraid. An educated guess agrees with you, Hud. It's probably something in the Windows graphics subsystem -- either a corrupted file, overly-taxed resource or maybe even a memory issue. I'm not aware of anything in the Sudoku program itself that would cause this.

If it were happening to me, I'd do the standard helpdesk routine of least-drastic to most-drastic:

1. Do a virus/spyware sweep
2. Hope it works
3. Update video drivers
4. Hope it works
5. Update chipset drivers (both should be available from your PC manufacturer)
6. Hope it works
7. Reinstall Windows

Good old #7 solves 98% of all computer problems, but obviously we can't go asking customers to do that all the time.

[QBasicMac]

I like the view processes option.

First, when clean, note the processes running.

Then run the program that eventually fails. Run it several times.

Now look at the processes. If you see some new ones, that is the bug. Just select those processes and stop them. Then report the details to the program author. (Probably started a process and forgot to stop it)

Mac

[Hud]

Mac, I like that thinking. I tried to print out the processes list and couldn't figure out how to do it. It would sure be easier than writing em all down, but I might just try that. I'll check out how many processes I have running after din-din. I know I have a bunch of em.

[QBasicMac]

If you want to go off on a tangent, yet learn something neat, check out HijackThis, a program that lists your processes and everything else important. Good for finding spyware, etc.

Otherwise, don't write down the whole list: too much data. Just scan visually. Tasks have numbers. If you start the program that generates tasks, you will get new numbers you can spot intuitively.

Good luck.

Mac

[Hud]

I'll check it out tomorrow. I just had another lockup and I had 38 processes running. After startup, I had about the same number. I don't know if I got something during a download, but don't think I've ever opened a suspicious email attachment.