Greetings,
I recently posted the trouble-ticket below at AllExperts.com. Their expert, Jeannie, tried her best but couldnt figure out the issue on my pc. So, she graciously referred me to this board. It's my first visit. I DID do a search of the XP forum of the last 365 days and only came up with one reference to the nefarious "DrWatson32.exe".
Perhaps one of your members would be so kind as to help me evict or calm down DrWatson.

Thanks in advance for any help. - Partok
=========================================
>
>Subject: DrWatson
>Question:
>
> Hi Jeannie,
>
> I am a longtime Mac user who reluctantly bought a PC a year and a half ago so that is my experience with WinXP.
>My latest issue concerns what appears to be Explorer bailing on me. This seems to start an M$ mini-app called "DrWatson Postmortem ..>Debugger". After it does whatever it does, it doesnt seem to exit cleanly, so the system is 'hung' until I go to the Windows Task Manager >and force "DrWatson32.exe" to quit. The system seems fine after this.
>Theory: I am an avid FlightSimmer and download many mb's of planes and scenery every week. I keep these in a folder on my Desktop until I >find time to move them to their final home in My Documents folder. In the meantime, sometimes this desktop folder has swollen to over >500mb in size before I empty it. Could this be causing Explorer to bail by possibly running out of memory or something??
>
> I thank you in advance for any help in prevent a visit from DrWatson again.
>
> Partok
>

Hi Partok, welcome to SAF

Dr. Watson is a program error debugger that detects and diagnoses program errors and creates User.dmp and DrWtsn32.log files to contain the diagnostic data. In Windows XP, these files are stored in the %systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson folder. The DrWtsn32.log file is appended each time a program error occurs; the User.dmp file is overwritten each time.

QUOTE

To turn off the Dr Watson debugger, apply the following Windows NT / Windows 2000 / Windows XP registry hack: Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Key: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug Name: Auto Type: REG_DWORD Value: 0 disable Value: 1 enable

Before making any changes on your registry file, create a backup first.

Hope it will help,

Chris

What exactly are you doing when doc intervenes..? Do you detect a pattern of any kind?

QUOTE (Ironbender @ Aug 28 2005, 07:19 AM)

Hi Partok, welcome to SAF Dr. Watson is a program error debugger that detects and diagnoses program errors and creates User.dmp and DrWtsn32.log files to contain the diagnostic data. In Windows XP, these files are stored in the %systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson folder. The DrWtsn32.log file is appended each time a program error occurs; the User.dmp file is overwritten each time. QUOTE To turn off the Dr Watson debugger, apply the following Windows NT / Windows 2000 / Windows XP registry hack: Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Key: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug Name: Auto Type: REG_DWORD Value: 0 disable Value: 1 enable Before making any changes on your registry file, create a backup first. Hope it will help, Chris

Thank-you Chris for your suggestion. This is alittle advanced for me, so I'll try a few other things before I follow your kind disable instructions. You've put me on the right path at least. I think I'll have to go have a look-see at what DrWatson's log has to say. It makes me kinda nervous to monkey around in there.

Cheers, Partok

QUOTE (moon @ Aug 28 2005, 01:00 PM)

What exactly are you doing when doc intervenes..? Do you detect a pattern of any kind?

Thanks Moon for your reply. The answer to your question would be no, I dont see a pattern to it. Sometimes when I close an Explorer window my Desktop icons will be generic for a moment or two, and then draw back to their normal selves. This is why I have a hunch it's some kind of Explorer bail that sets off the good DrWatson.
Once in a great while I'll close an Explorer window and NO icons show on the Desktop; theres a long pause, then I get the "Do you want to report this to M$" popup. It also states that "DrWatson32.exe" had to be shut down, yet I can move NOTHING on the desktop until I go into Windows Task Manager and kill DrWatson, manually. Then everything works just fine. Wierd eh?
This all happens about once a week now. :-( Maybe it's time for a reinstall using HP/Compaq's "Rescue Partition", but I'm afraid I'll lose some data and 100+gb is ALOT of stuff to backup. I have about 90gb free on my HD. At least it isnt totally full.

Any more ideas? Thanks again Moon, - Partok

What does the event viewer look like?

Also, have you tried SFC to fix your sys files?

QUOTE (moon @ Aug 29 2005, 09:39 PM)

What does the event viewer look like? Also, have you tried SFC to fix your sys files?

Thanks again Moon for your reply,
I'm not really sure what SFC is.

I had another bail of this type yesterday. On the theory that having too many icons and too many MB's of files on the Desktop, I moved alot of stuff to My Documents so as not to tax Explorer too much. We'll see if the bails subside now.

Thanks again, Partok