re: dwwin.exe
Monday, April 4, 2005 at 9:40 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Ken
(944 messages posted)
Hi all. I too had this dwwin.exe error message start to pop up at shutdown with WinXP
Home Ed SP-2. It started right after installing a Gravis Gamepad Pro, and its XPerience
ver 4.5 software. I also have Norton System Works 2003 installed.
I have spent nearly 18 man-hours on this issue and I could have given up or chosen
an easy out, but I'm the type person who likes a challenge AND demands to know EXACTLY
what is causing a problem, so here's my results and opinions in the hope others can
isolate their issues more quickly.
I read this thread with great interest and tried nearly everything someone suggested
with varying degrees of success. Here's what I recommend:
1. Do NOT turn off error reporting. You're only hiding the problem. That's like taping
over your low fuel warning light and pretending it doesn't exist.
2. As someone earlier correctly pointed out, using "start /belownormal" in the registry
before a Run command will simply disable that Run command, so of course the problem
will appear to go away. But that will also keep the subject driver from loading at
all (in my case the Gravis Grxp4exe.exe device driver), and you will not have use
of its functions. The Gamepad still functions as a joystick from MS Windows drivers,
but that's not why you installed the software in the first place. In my case, I wanted
to use the Gamepad velcroed to my desk as a mini-keypad with all the buttons mapped
to keys. You can't do that without the XPerience software driver loaded and functional.
Sorry Norm, but your method is no different than simply unchecking the box in msconfig
and rebooting.
3. The dwwin.exe error message appears because Dr. Watson detected an error, tried
to load so it could report the error, and failed to initialize because Windows was
being shut down. The key statement here is that "Dr. Watson detected an error". That's
a good thing. It's your low fuel warning light. The challenge then becomes how to
identify and correct the error in a logical, timely manner.
4. Software conflicts arise out of at least two applications having a problem with
each other. How do you identify which two? In my case, it was easy to identify one
since the problem started immediately after I installed the Gravis XPerience ver
4.5 software. I could (and did) verify that this was the problem by uninstalling
it and the problem went away. But that didn't get me my mini-keyboard working.
5. After trying many suggestions in this thread and not getting anywhere, I decided
to be logical about this and disabled ALL in the msconfig Startup Tab. Then I enabled
the Gravis driver entirely by itself, and it worked perfectly with no dwwin.exe message.
I think you can guess the rest....
6. I re-enabled one item at a time, starting with the ones I suspected to be the
culprits (Norton apps first, LOL), and rebooted each time. My conflict was not with
any Norton app - they all loaded without a hitch. My conflict was found on the 8th
or 9th app enabled, a memory management program I have called FreeMem Pro, ver 5.2.
I immediately disabled it, and the problem went away, re-enabled it, the problem
came back. Fortunately I had an earlier version of FreeMem Pro in my archives so
on a whim I uninstalled 5.2 and installed 5.0. Guess what? No conflict. The difference
in the two versions of this program is rather minimal, and I can easily accept that
in return for no more conflicts or error messages.
7. Having found one conflict, I re-enabled ALL 20 or so other Startup items, rebooted
and luckily that was the only problem. No more error messages and all my apps are
coexisting peacefully again.
Hope this helps others and good luck on your troubleshooting!
Ken
- Written in response to:
- re: dwwin.exe (Ron: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 11:08 am)
There are presently no replies to this message.
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All messages in this thread [show all]
 | dwwin.exe (Leigh: Sun, Aug 18, 2002, 5:05 pm) |
 |  | | | | | | | dwwin.exe (selina: Mon, Sep 18, 2006, 9:51 am) |
| | |  | re: dwwin.exe (Ken: Mon, Apr 4, 2005, 9:40 am) |
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