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GSA Hardware and System Limitations

General

  • The size of problem that can be handled by GSA depends on the memory that is available on the PC. Refer to the Installation Notes on the Downloads page for current recommendations.
  • When the Internet Explorer 'Temporary Internet Files' folder is the same as the Oasys Temporary folder backup files are hidden from the File Dialog (and Explorer).
    Overcome this either by changing the IE 'Temporary Internet Files' folder or (in GSA 7.5 et seq.) by changing the Oasys Temporary folder in 'Options | Preferences | Miscellaneous | File Locations'. In GSA 7.5, the Oasys Temporary folder defaults to 'system temporary folder'\Oasys.
    Note that it is better to have the IE 'Temporary Internet Files' folder below the system temporary folder rather than at the system temporary folder.

Graphic Views

  • The program automatically prints the image in monochrome if it can recognise the device to which it is printing as a monochrome device. Some older devices are not recognised in this way so GSA attempts to print in colour, resulting in some faint entities. In this circumstance it is advisable to explicitly set the 'Fonts and Styles' print settings to monochrome.
  • Incompatibilities have been encountered between GSA Graphic Views, which are based on OpenGL, and certain graphics chips and drivers. Symptoms vary from losing part of the image to hanging or crashing GSA.
    The following table identifies circumstances in which problems have been found and recommends how to overcome the problem.

    Device Computer OS Fix
    ATI's Mobility Radeon 9000 Toshiba Tecra S1 laptop XP A or C
    Trident Cyber XP-4 Video Card Toshiba Protégé R100 laptop XP A
    ATI's Rage Mobility Dell Inspiron 3700 laptop
    Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop    		 '95
    '98    		 A
    ATI Rage PRO AGP 2X Compaq Deskpro ENL '95
    '98    		 A
    S3's Mobile Savage/IX Toshiba Pro 4200 laptop
    Toshiba Satellite 4200 laptop    		 '95
    '98
    'NT
    '2000    		 A
    Matrox Millenium G400 MAX AGP ? 'NT
    '2000    		 B
    Matrox Millenium G200 AGP ? 'NT
    '2000    		 B
    Matrox Millenium 450 PCI ? 'NT
    '2000    		 B

    Where:

    Fix Description of Fix
    A Reduce the graphics acceleration setting in 'Control Panel | Display | Settings | Advanced | Performance' to None. Nb. Admin permissions are needed when making this adjustment on Windows NT and Windows 2000.
    B Download and install the latest Matrox driver from the Matrox web site (www.matrox.com).
    C Download and install the latest display driver from the Toshiba web site (e.g. www.toshiba.co.uk). Check the driver's installation instructions to determine whether an update to the BIOS is required first.

    Please advise Oasys of similar problems on other configurations and whether reducing the graphics acceleration overcomes the problem.
  • Some graphics cards that are optimised for a particular version of OpenGL result in a fuzzy Graphic View when run with the OpenGL DLLs installed with GSA. This may be overcome by renaming files OpenGL32.dll and Glu32.dll in the GSA folder to, say, _OpenGL32.dll and _Glu32.dll. This will result in the system versions of these DLLs being used by GSA. In this circumstance black strips may be displayed along two edges of Graphic Views. (The GSA versions of the OpenGL DLLs are installed with GSA to overcome the black strip problem.)
  • In some circumstances the OpenGL hidden surface removal algorithm fails, producing bizarre rendering of surfaces in the screen image. Regenerating the image will sometimes improve the rendering.

Crashing when Printing on Windows 95 and 98

Certain printer drivers supplied for use with Windows 95 and 98 have been found to cause GSA to crash under some circumstances. Typically the crash will be while printing though sometimes it can occur after having printed (i.e. after the printer driver has done its damage). The best way of avoiding this problem is to change the printer set up so as to use a printer driver that works. Drivers found to cause this problem so far are the Windows 95 and 98 PCL6 drivers for the HPLJ4000 and HPLJ5000; the post-script versions of these drivers seem to work correctly.

Dial Up Connection Dialog

On machines that have dial up connection to the internet enabled via a modem the Dial Up Connection dialog box is sometimes displayed upon entry to GSA.

This can be overcome by setting the 'Internet Explorer | Tools | Internet Options | Connections | Dial-up settings' option to 'Never dial a connection'.

Crashes due to COMCTL32.DLL

"Invalid page fault in COMCTL32.DLL at ..." may be overcome by installing the latest version of this DLL from the Microsoft Product Support website. The article titled "INFO: Redistribution of Comctl32.dll" (Article ID: Q186176) (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q186/1/76.ASP) gives information and download options.

COMCAT.DLL fails to register

Sometimes an installation of GSA produces the following message "Self-registration error: C:\WINNT\System32\COMCAT.DLL ...". This does not appear to cause any problems while running GSA, and is probably due to another DLL being superseded. The article entitled "GW 2.0 Err Msg: COMCAT.dll Was Unable to Register" (Article ID: Q179823) (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q179/8/23.ASP and "Works Suite Err Msg: Comcat.dll Was Unable to Register Itself in the System Registry" (Article ID: Q228874) (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q228/8/74.ASP give information and download options.

Section Database Cannot be Read

This may be caused by 1, 2 or 3 below:

  1. GSA's record of the location of the sectlib.db file has been corrupted. This may cause the error message 'The module Sections could not be read due to errors'. To resolve this:
    • delete the sectlib file location entry from GSA via 'Options | Preferences | Miscellaneous | File Locations' (and clicking 'no' don't locate sectlib);
    • exit GSA:
    • run the Windows Registry Editor ('Start | Run | regedit.exe') and delete the registry entry of 'SectDB' at 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE | SOFTWARE | Oasys | General | File Paths'; and
    • restart GSA and load the data file.
  2. The file DAO360.dll or its registration in the operating system has been corrupted. This may cause the error message 'unable to initialize DAO/Jet db engine'. To resolve this:
    • check that the file DAO360.dll is located in the folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DAO; and
    • re-register that dll with the operating system via 'Start | Run | regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DAO\DAO360.dll" '.
  3. In some versions of Windows 95, 98 and NT4.0 the error message 'unable to initialize DAO/Jet db engine' is displayed and GSA terminates due to the wrong verison of Jet on the machine. This can be solved by downloading the Jet 4.0 SP7 update from Microsoft. This update is included if Office 2000 is installed. The appropriate update can be downloaded from Microsoft.