This is most likely a compatibility conflict with the video driver. Borland tests its products against generic S3 drivers provided by Microsoft or S3 Inc. Any drivers compliant with this standard should be okay. Video drivers that do not fully comply with this standard may or may not function correctly with Delphi.

To verify that you have a video driver issue try changing the hardware acceleration in the display properties to 'None'. To do this go to Control PanelDisplaySettingsAdvanced PropertiesPerformance (a setting in the middle may work also). Restart the computer and try opening Delphi. If the problem is gone then you know it is a video driver issue.

If the system still freezes: In Windows 95 try starting in safe mode. In Windows 98, in the SYSTEM.INI file under the ;display] section, add the line 'BusThrottle = ' (no quotes). Save the file, reboot and try running Delphi again.

Here are some more permanent solutions:

. Install the Delphi 4 service pack 3. This offers a work-around by changing the way the component palette icon image list is loaded at startup. 2. Start Delphi with the "-ns" switch: At the Run command line type "delphi32.exe" -ns. Make sure the -ns is outside the quotes (It may be necessary to type the entire path to the delphi32.exe file inside the quotes).

3. Install a new video driver.

For more on video driver issues see http://www.borland.com/devsupport/delphi/qanda/ 296.html 4/ /99 3:23:58 PM