What does a "W" mean on a pop-up screen?

[theripper]

Customer has an NT Server (sp4) with only the mouse and the background present. As I hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, this popup jumps to the screen. It has the letter &quot;W&quot; in the title bar. Choices were: End Task, or Shut Down. I selected end task 'bout 14 times. Once back to &quot;normal&quot; I checked the Event Viewer, but didn't see anything outta the ordinary. Task Manager didn't show anything extra running either. <br>
<br>
The server appears to be working fine now. <br>
<br>
Has anyone seen this before?<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>

 

[Zelandakh]

Check for any programs in startup that you don't recognise, particularly those starting with W. Also check in registry for any files in keys startup and runonce.<br>
<br>
Looks like there is a background program that is failing on boot up. Once killed the rest of the server works fine.

 

[BruceP]

Most likely what has happened was a 16 bit application that was being run on the machine crashed/stopped responding. The W that you saw was most likely from WOWexec. This is a 32 bit application that is used to control 16 bit applications running on a 32 bit architecture (wow - windows on windows). Apparently this hung up on some application and just stayed resident in memory until you shut it down. Since it was a 16 bit application being run within a wowexec environment space, there may be no entry in the event log. Wowexec was probably doing what it should have, isolate the application.

 

[theripper]

Thanks for the responses. I will try each of the suggestions.<br>
<br>

 

[gimmebop]

I'm having a problem similar to this where wowexec causes a GPF. Any ideas on how to correct this?

 

[johncurtis]

Gimmebop,

Check your config.nt file. See

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q103/6/56.asp

for details.

Try editing the config.nt to read:

device=%SystemRoot%\system32\himem.sys
dos=high,umb
files=80
SHELL=%SystemRoot%\system32\command.com /e:2048

hth
John

 

[yizhar]

HI!

We had some similar problems on an NT server, which were caused by a SCSI problem.
Check your event viewer.
Is your server running IIS and connected to the Internet?
Could it been attacked?
A check for viruses is also mandatory.

Bye
Yizhar
Yizhar Hurwitz

http://come.to/yizhar

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar