Microsoft KB Archive/105772

WD6X: Screen Display Problems Q & A

Q105772

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Word for Windows, version 6.0
Microsoft Windows 3.1

SUMMARY

This article contains Questions and Answers ABOUT Screen Display Problems in Word for Windows.

MORE INFORMATION

Q. Why do I have distortion, or garbage, on my screen in Word 6.0?
1. Any of the following screen display problems may occur due to problems with the video driver supplied with your video card:
  1. Screen distortion, such as "snow" or "remnants," may appear when you type or scroll in Word 6.0 with certain video display drivers, such as the ATI Ultra. When Word redraws the screen, the distortion disappears, but it recurs the next time you type or scroll.
  2. The hot spots on the status bar appear to do nothing when you double-click them, even though they are actually functioning normally.
  3. The text and messages on the status bar may be hard to read or may not display at all. For example, when you press the INS key to turn on overtype mode in Word, "OVR" does not appear on the status bar to indicate that you are in this mode.
  4. The shading applied by some wizards does not display correctly. For example, the shaded border around an award certificate you create using the Awards Wizard displays incorrectly. It prints correctly, however.
  If you have problems that relate to the video driver supplied with your video card, ask the video card manufacturer if there is an updated driver. If you have the ATI Ultra video card, you can obtain an updated video driver by contacting ATI Technical Support at (905) 882-2626 or by connecting to ATI's bulletin board at (905) 764-9404.
  
  If no new video driver is available, you can use the standard VGA video driver supplied with Windows instead. You may be able to correct these screen problems by setting the Display switch in the WINWORD6.INI file. For information about the Display switch, see the online README Help file in Word. If you have an ATI Ultra video card, use one of the following Display switch settings to correct the problem:
  1. If the screen distortion occurs when you type, set the Display=1 switch.
  2. If the screen distortion occurs when you scroll, set the Display=2 switch.
Q. Why does a general protection (GP) fault error sometimes occur while I edit my Word 6.0 document?
1. A GP fault error may occur in Word when you use the Dell(R) S3 video driver, which is supplied with some Dell computers. Microsoft has reproduced this problem using the Dell S3 video driver version 3.1.3a. The problem does not occur in Word 6.0 when you use version 3.1.4 of the Dell S3 driver (S3645K.DRV). To obtain this updated version of the video driver, contact Dell Computer Systems at the following phone numbers:
  
  Dell Technical Support: (800) 624-9896
  Dell Bulletin Board Service (BBS): (512) 728-8528
  
  To work around this problem, use the standard VGA video driver supplied with Windows.

Additional query words: voice script msav q & a Q&A 6.0 tshoot troubleshoot troubleshooting

Keywords : kbdta winword word6
Issue type : kbinfo
Technology :