Category: Geeks r Us
A friend of mine has the latest copy of jaws and is unable to determine a solution to a very real problem.
When pressing insert f4 to exit jaws to load NVDA, the entire machine locks up and the only option is to perform a hard shutdown. The only way to exit jaws is through the task manager. I have done NVDA remote with him and have tried killing the PID through the command line. When running tasklist, I see the jfw.exe process and process identifier, but when attempting to forcibly kill the process from there, it informs me I don't have permission to do so. I am also told the jaws icon remains in the system tray for some reason. This is after ending the task through task manager. This is very unusual, he has tried disabling his third party graphics drivers and using only the generic ones to no avail. JAWS still hangs when trying to exit using insert f4. Only a small number of people on jaws user groups are having this issue, and I still suspect it is a video driver issue. I seem to remember something about jaws 18 doing away with the mirror and/or video intercept systems. This, in theory, should resolve the issue, but I cannot find a comprehensive list of problematic video cards. Can anyone provide a list of these or provide any advice on why jaws continually freezes his machine. To be clear, he has 16 gb of ram, a large ssd and a hefty collection of hardware. He is running the latest version of jaws 18 and windows 10 64 and has an AMD radion series video card.
Just some thoughts, but not saying these are the fix.
First, how was Windows installed?
My understanding, is to get the 64 bit version to work properly, you'd have had to do a clean install. That is if you've upgraded it from a previous Windows.
Does your friend have the correct bit of Jaws installed?
Sounds silly, but you might try clean installing Jaws and making sure you install the 64 bit version.
That requires removing it not only from add and remove, but programs files and anyplace else it might be, then installing fresh.
All of these steps have been accounted for which is why I pose the question to others on here. Jaws 32 will not even begin to install on 64 bit windows, so that isn't part of the issue. Windows was clean installed, and yes, he has removed jaws completely and installed fresh. This is a new machine, only a few months old, custom built.
Okay. If you don't get any other suggestions on this board, I'd start with Microsoft to see if they could solve the problem.
Sometimes custom builds have weird issues and they'd be able to track it down.
After that, I'd go to FS to see what they suggest with Microsoft's suggestions.
I’ve got one other suggestion. You can research how, or ask Microsoft for this support.
You know that Windows 10 has keystroke and accessibility features built in. These features are keystroke driven.
What might need to happen, is that you reconfigure them so that the keystroke insert F4 does what you want it to instead of seemingly locking your system up.
It is possible to change how Windows behaves, so what you’ll want to do is find that information, or just ask Microsoft to fix this for you.
I'd bet this will solve the issue on this machine.
The issue is not with keybindings, the issue is something with either jaws or his video card. He has told me others have had this same problem. I'm unable to test whether or not this is do to the latest update to jaws, or what the different variables are on his system compared to others that are different and also those who exhibit this issue.
Right, and that is why, if I had it to fix, I'd go to Microsoft with the issue.
They've been able to test other machines, or might have had the problem to solve.
Maybe someone else will have a solution, but that be my way of solving the problem.
I have a custom built laptop and have not experienced this issue. Perhaps it is a problem with the AMD video card. I have an NVIDIA and everything works fine.
Video cards use to be at fault for somethings with Jaws, but this hasn't been the case for a while now.