Blue screen when shutting down PO

[Administrator]

I just want to comment on these kind of problems, they are not common, there are a lot of people using PokerOffice and 99.99999% does not have this problem. We are not even able to reproduce it so I was hopeing for a bit of understanding when we have to ask a few questions and ask you to try a few things out.

If you can try all the things I suggested and tell us how it went. You may also try the solution given by 7earplug if you want it can give valuable information, if you do please let us know how it goes.

[Grrr...]

I did try all the things you suggested.
Reinstall Po off course, remove java, etc.
Like I said before, it is a brand new computer, and the second thing i installed after Poker room is PO, so I don"t think it's a third party.
I think it could be something about the graphic card or any driver. It is dubious though as all my hardware is pretty standard.

And may be this problem is very rare, but i understood that javaw.exe is causing a lot of trouble with many.
And I might add that I try to run PO (still evaluation copy) on my laptop and it NEVER worked. I had the hand evalutation but not the info about the players. I gave up since I mostly play poker on my Workstation at home. But you can understand that I don't really need the odds since I mostly play SNG. (ICM would be more usefull to me )

[Grrr...]

ok.
I isolated my problem.
thanks to 7ear, after some research, i ran my computer without any videodriver. And... PO worked perfectly.
So I reinstalled from Nvidia website the brand new drivers for my graphic card ( a geforce 8500gt btw, quite standard !). And now I get a blue screen when PO shuts down AGAIN.

My new dearest friend 7ear, could you help me with this ???

edit : the blue screen told my it was a problem with nv4_disp*.dll

[7earplugs]

Well I may not be your dearest friend when I tell you that
nvidia cards in particular have many known problems with XP and a have multitudes of reasons why the problem should occur and also multiple solutions.
Everybody wants a simple single fix for their problem. It doesn't exist because their are
so many causes:
outdated BIOS, BIOS setting, badly fitted graphics cards, motherboard drivers, video drivers, faulty video cards, video card settings, windows updates, memory write problems are just some of the more likely causes.

Finding your particular problem may not easy and I'm likely to run away if the simple solution don't work

I found a webpage (link below) which is about the clearest advice I've seen relating to video card problems
similar to yours. Infact many of the solutions described I've tried at one time or another in recent years. I've had similar problems of my own not too long ago, I tried just about everything. One problem was eventually solved when I found that a fan attached to my graphics card was faulty/dirty, my graphics card was running too hot and my BIOS settings were reporting that and my pc was sounding an audible alarm (horrible screechy sound it was) intermittantly. It was solved by changing to an older graphics card and changing some BIOS settings. I believe my current card is still running too hot...seems I've fooled my pc into thinking it's not and things are fine on this pc...for now

So I can't tell you exactly what your problem is. I'm just not good enough at these things.

What I would do is try the simplest solution first.
1. Download the latest drivers for your card ( I think you already have those)
It may be an idea to download a couple of previous versions of the relevant nvidia drivers also.
2. Download Driver Sweeper here - unzip, Double click the setup.exe and install driver sweeper.
Driver Sweeper cleans remnants of installed driver files. I cannot gaurantee that it will be succesful on your pc. Your choice.

3.This bit is your own choice Go to windows updates and get the latest update for your pc. You could do custom updates rather than express if you wish. Choose the updates relating to XP service packs and DirectX etc.
(some problems with graphic cards seem to be related to windows updates, since XP will already has some microsoft video drivers which may work with your card - in some systems things get confused it seems)

4.Remove the NVIDIA display drivers currently installed on your machine. To do this, right click on “My Computer,” then select Properties. Click the “Hardware” tab, then click “Device Manager.” You now see a list of hardware devices installed on your computer. Double click “Display Adapters.” You should now see your NVIDIA card listed. Click it once to highlight it, then click the “Uninstall” icon in the upper right of Device Manager menu.
You may also be able to uninstall from Control Panel>Add/Remove Programmes..
find nvidia drivers in the list. May as well do both methods.

5.Restart your pc in Safe Mode(press F8 during the restart and choose Safe Mode from the option list...(oh and give safe mode time to get there...it's sometimes slow)

6. Start Driver Sweeper.Driver Sweeper cleans remnants of installed driver files. I cannot gaurantee that it will be succesful on your pc. Your choice. If you don't not wish to use this method, do step 4 in safe mode.
In Driver Sweeper -Go to Options>Miscellaneous>and check 'create backup'
(If needed your files can be restored later using the backup>restore backup option)
Back on the main menu- Choose - Nvidia (Display) and click the > button to add just Nvidia (Display)to the right window.
Finally Click the Run Sweeper button ( The broom icon)
On completion you may get instuctions to reboot.
Once again, it's your choice whether you use Driver Sweeper.

7. Restart ( I might restart in Safe Mode again here)
-Install your new video drivers.
-Reboot again normally.

Try PokerOffice

If no luck, repeat the above for previous versions of the drivers that you may have obtained from nvidia website.

There are a couple of other fairly simple things that I could suggest next if none of the above work. A programme called RivaTuner is designed to tweak nvidia card settings which may or may not help you and there is a nvidia service you can switch off easily, described in the link below, which again may or may not help.

If those don't solve it then you'd have to try trickier solutions ..maybe updating BIOS, changing BIOS settings, reseating your graphics card, all of which I've done a few times on different pc's but I wouldn't want to advise you to do that here.

Good luck.

useful article here

[Grrr...]

first, I want to thank you 7ear. You do the job that PO people should do. Thanks a lot for the time you spent.

I really think it is a driver problem, but i couldnt solve it. I am really surprised that no more people have that issue. Am I the only one to have a nvidia graphic card ? May be my XP is to old.

Whatever : a last post IN THIS THREAD to tell you that i can finally shut PO down !!
I turned "acceleration materielle" to "none". In the disaply settings.

I will now see if PO overlay works.

thanks again

[7earplugs]

Good to hear you're getting somewhere.

Changing graphic card settings with RivaTuner was an option if the driver reinstallation didn't work.

Possibly reducing hardware acceleration ("acceleration materielle") settings may be helpful, although not really a solution.
If you find a stable piont at zero, where your programs work, you can try increasing your hardware acceleration gradually until you find a level that causes a problem. Then move it back down one level.

For anybody else, adjusting your hardware acceleration settings can be done in a few seconds..

right click somewhere on your desktop
>choose properties
>On Display Properties now > choose settings>click advanced> then click the troubleshooting tab..ther you will find the hardware acceleration slider.
...but... Full acceleration is recommended.
You can use the slider to decrease the level,
however this may cause problems when using some other programs eg if you are using your pc for games etc they may not run properly.

[PokerOffice Support]

7earplugs, thanks a lot for your very detailed posts! I will keep this thread in mind when/if I heard about a similar problem again.

[Grrr...]

I know it might cause more problem, but I can put the slider down when i am playing poker.

One last question : do you think that if I create another windows session, i can have different aceleration settings ? I could have a "poker session" and another one for anything else.

[7earplugs]

I don't know really you might be better asking elsewhere but I don't see any problems with changing the acceleration when you play poker.

Running poker on another installation of windows is another thing you could do if you have space on your drive. Just boot up into that one when you want to play poker?

[Grrr...]

naaaaaah ! I meant create another user you can choose from the startup menu. But I think I will try that soon and see by myself.