ID: Q105772
The information in this article applies to:
This article contains Questions and Answers ABOUT Screen Display Problems in Word for Windows.
1. Q. Why do I have distortion, or garbage, on my screen in Word 6.0?
A. 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.
2. Q. Why does a general protection (GP) fault error sometimes occur
while I edit my Word 6.0 document?
A. 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.
Keywords : kbdta winword word6
Version : WINDOWS:6.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbinfoLast Reviewed: May 20, 1999