S7 Crashing XP

I'm working in a school environment with a trainer running STEP 7 V. 5.3 + SP3 on a machine running XP SP3 Ver.5_1_2600. This machine also has AB software (Linx, RSLogix, etc)but when using for Siemens we stop all AB services manually, as I recall people having issues with the two not playing nicely together. My problem is that when Simatic Manager is running, Windows randomly crashes (often) for no obvious reason. After recovery I get the Windows error signature "BCCode: 1000007e BCP1: C0000005 BCP2:A7A9C733 with ever changing BCP3 and BCP4 codes. I've searched the forums for similar problems but found no answers yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure I can help specifically.

When Microsoft developed Windows NT4 (and subsequent OS's) they moved all the graphics routines from privilege ring 1 to privilege ring 0 to prevent a context switch when writing to the screen. This dramatically speeds things up in a desktop environment but has the downside that anything that goes wrong in the graphics arena can trash the entire machine.

Take a look at any third party stuff to do with the display: Graphics drivers, VNC, Screen capture, etc.

Personally, I've always kept the Rockwell stuff on a separate machine from Siemens stuff as a matter of caution.

Nick

an oem I worked with said that you cannot install the two software packages on a pc for this very reason. he used vm's to keep them separate.

james

Thanks for your responses guys, I will try using VM's and see if that works. I'm going to be forced to give up my XP machines sooner than later; when I do I will probably install Rockwell on the stationary PC and load the S7 software on a laptop that I can connect when needed to the trainer as I don't have as much call for Siemens training at this point. I have also heard from sources that they don't work well on the same machine. Once again, thanks for your input.

OOPS! It looks like I owe an apology, It seems that I asked a similar question 5 years ago...That's how long it's bee since I taught a Siemens class.