News Xpress Manual

Chapter 6: Things to look out for.

If every time NX is started, Windows displays a GPF error message stating:
"NX caused a General Protection fault in module USER.EXE at 000B:01F7",
try deleting the KILLRC file found in NX's home directory and allow NX to build another one.

If every time NX is shutdown, Windows displays a GPF error message stating:
"NX caused a General Protection fault in module USER.EXE at 0007:53C1",
try trimming the number of newsgroups contained in the NEWSRC file. You will have to use a text editor which can load files greater than 64K in size (which eliminates NotePad). NX allows a maximum of 16383 newsgroups. Consider removing those newgroups which will never be read.

How does one then get a valid and complete NEWSRC file to begin the editing process? On the one hand, until a stand-alone program is written to do this, you may have to experiment with several other newsreaders hoping one will create a file compatible with NEWSRC. On the other hand, the following is an effective work-around. Do not have NX running at this point:

Rename any current NEWSRC file to something else.
Now have NX connect to the host server (File, Connect) and NX will, since there is no NEWSRC file, begin to fetch all newsgroup names beginning from the first as they currently reside on the server.
At the bottom of NX's main window, a status area will say Retrieving newsgroup list ##### where ##### is the count of retrieved newsgroup names. When ##### says 10000 or so, force NX to close by double clicking on the button in the upper-left corner of the window. NX will save whatever it got into a NEWSRC file.
NX will also GPF at this point. Click {Close} and then maybe {OK} if another GPF window pops up. Everything is still fine.
Using an editor capable of editing large files, delete whatever newsgroups are not wanted from this NEWSRC file. Typically, what's left over will be a NEWSRC of just about 400 newsgroups.
Edit a file called NX.INI and find a line that says: NewsrcUpdate=yymmdd hhmmss and have the yymmdd part read 940601.
Start NX and set Config, Preferences, "Retrieve new groups only, if any" to on.
File, Connect NX to the host server once again. This time, NX will fetch all newsgroup names that were added to the server since June 1, 1994 (about 10,000).
Close NX, re-edit NEWSRC to eliminate duplicate newsgroups and other unwanted newsgroups.
You're done.

There is another way and that is to subscribe to news.announce.newgroups and get the latest List of Active Newsgroups found there. Unfortunately, it does not contain newsgroups that are strictly local.

If Windows still gives this GPF when NX closes, look for an excessively long newsgroup name in the NEWSRC file. Use an editor (capable of handling large files) to find it and remove it.

There is a situation where, when NX is shutdown, not all system references to the program are removed from Windows' awareness. Consequently, attempting to restart NX results in a message claiming Windows cannot start more than one copy of the application. Additionally in this situation, shutting down Winsock will prompt an advisory message warning you of potential instability in network operations. It's a complicated bug - hard to find and fix. When this happens, only by quitting and restarting Windows will NX be able to to be started again.

When saving files using {Save}, the first time will work fine. But downloading another article and trying to save it the same way, it will just append that article to the previously defined file. The File, Save As.. dialogue box will not come up anymore. Use File, Save As.. from the menu to save to a new filename.

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, {Post} no longer is a valid option. It "grey's-out". Reloading NX is the only way to correct this. It is perhaps a bug restricted to a particular configuration as NX installed on other machines do not exhibit this problem.

There are some reports of intermittent printing problems. Sometimes an article will go off into never-never land, other times an application error message pops up.

Also, there is no way to change the printer properties (page size, margins, etc.) for articles printed by NX.

A minor bug has been reported where, if some articles have been read, then a few of those articles are marked as unread, the count of read articles on the status bar becomes incorrect.

Sometimes when NX is minimized then restored, the scroll bar disappears. It then reappeares when clicked-on by the mouse.

When trying to delete a folder via the Config, Folder menu option, the window showing the folder has to be closed before it can be deleted.

There is a maximum number of entries in the killfile. At 175 +/-3 the newsgroup will fail to load and state that there are no unread articles.

If the Followup-to: header line has the keyword "poster" added, corrections, additions, etc. to an article should be forced by e-mail to the author instead of sent to the newsgroup. However, it seems that NX ignores this and sends follow-ups to the newsgroup anyway.

After NX hits an error in the downloading and decoding process, NX will just sit there waiting for acknowledgment. There is no way to disable these error message so that processing will continue.

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