[potatoboy]

Whenever a contact of mine with a weird SYMBOL in their nickname decides to chat with me, my computer freezes up.

Weird symbols include those not found on a keyboard: Fancy stars, Weird circles, Heart shapes and the lots of them.
I am not talking about emoticons. Just weird symbols that you have to copy and past from Word document or some other way.

*EDIT*
While trying to copy some symbols from my contact list, I clicked on this contact with the symbols, and my computer froze up. Thank goodness for Firefox and its session savers.

Anyway, does anyone know the roots of my computer's behavioural problems? I hate having to force restart each time someone with a fancy nickname chats with me. Sometimes I get lucky, but once I alt-tab back into the chat window, it hangs.

trying to bring up task manager does not help,
jamming my esc button like a madman doesn't either.


h3lp pl0x.

 

[Dracia]

You said "pl0x", you sound like someone I know :smile:

Anyway, that is a very strange problem. Try reinstalling MSN?

What happens if you come across that symbol anywhere else, such as looking for it on the internet? Does it crash then?

 

[potatoboy]

ayee.

have not tried reinstalling yet.

okay, here's one of the symbols:
♥

I was thinking that Messenger can't access my symbol database or something, and winds up freezing up my entire computer. The thing is, it happens 70% of the time. The other times my computer doesn't jam is when I cautiously and SLOWLY alt-tab into the chat windows.
I find that these ways prevents my frequent crashes compared to when I click on the minimized chat window while its still blinking or "loading".

one of my own hypotheses. Weird, I know.

bah.

You said "pl0x", you sound like someone I know

Just another one of those computer-geek wannabes. :laugh:

 

[Dracia]

Ok, perhaps you could try sfc /scannow.

Go to Start > Run then type "sfc /scannow". Note the space between the c and /

It will ask you for your Windows XP cd... hope you have one ^^ if not, see if a friend has one. I think it needs to be of the same service pack as what you currently have, but not sure.

SFC scans your computer's OS files and replaces any corrupt ones.

Back up your data first in case anything happens. It shouldn't do, but better safe than sorry.

 

[potatoboy]

whuts,

okay thanks for the advice.

I don't have the Cd though. misplaced it years ago. Ahwell.