Explanations for crashes of Stata for Windows

• Do you have a Logitech mouse?
• Do you have a Toshiba laptop?
• Do you have bad or conflicting device drivers?

Stata is crashing — Do you have a Logitech mouse?

If your copy of Stata for Windows is crashing, check to see whether or not you have a Logitech mouse.

In the [386Enh] section of C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI, Logitech places a line which reads keyboard=lvkd.386. If you replace this line with keyboard=*vkd, the crash goes away, and you still get the advanced features of your mouse.

This driver allows you to simulate mouse-clicks with your keyboard and/or set up certain keyboard/mouse-click combinations to have a special meaning to your computer. Most users do not use these features and so lose nothing by disabling the driver.

Stata for Windows 3.1 is crashing — Do you have a Toshiba laptop?

We have received reports of problems with Stata for Windows 3.1 running on some newer Toshiba laptop computers. After reading through the reports on the problem, it became apparent that the problem only occurred under Windows 3.1. Some users have had success simply by installing Windows 95.

A FAQ was posted regarding Logitech mouse drivers conflicting with Stata under Windows 3.1. It seems that some Toshiba notebooks are using the same mouse/keyboard drivers under a different name.

For those of you who are still experiencing this problem, try this solution:

• The first step is to look in your C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI file under the [386Enh] section. See if there is a line that reads:

     keyboard=lvkd.386

• If you find this line, change it to read:

     keyboard=*vkd

• Save the file, exit Windows, restart Windows, then try running Stata.

By changing the above line, you will lose the ability to perform the mouse/keyboard combination "tricks", a seldom-used feature of this driver.

If you try the above and it DOES NOT solve the problem, please email a report of your Toshiba model number and operating system, along with your Stata serial number and copies of your autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini and system.ini files to tech-support@stata.com.

Stata is crashing — Do you have bad or conflicting device drivers?

Check your config.sys and make sure that the line containing himem.sys is the very first line. The second line should contain emm386.exe noems (or qemm.exe) if it is used at all. Modify the config.sys to make these changes if you have to but make sure you backup both your config.sys and autoexec.bat before modifying them!

If that does not work, you must now disable all your drivers to confirm that it is a driver problem. To do this, enter DOS and type

     rename autoexec.bat autoexec.old
     copy config.sys config.old

Then edit your config.sys and make sure that it only contains the himem.sys line and nothing else. Restart Windows and execute Stata. If that solves your problem, then there is a device driver problem and you will basically have to add in drivers one at a time until you can narrow it down to one driver.