Pagemaker (?) problem

[Guest guest]

We are using Pagemaker 7 and are finishing work on a large book with many

files (linked in the "Utilities\Book" feature") and lots of pictures. We are

nearly finished, the text is all formatted, the pictures are all placed and

the columns on the pages aligned. We are now finding that on some (not all)

of the files if we change any text (even deleting the smallest character)

all of the text in the file moves down (increases) undoing all of our

alignment work and text wraps. The same thing happens even when we make

index entries. While working on the index, on some files we are getting the

message:

 

"HyperContent Manager Error Parameters Incorrect".

 

None of the words in the above error message are mentioned in Help nor is

there any mention in the books I have on Pagemaker. Other times when we open

such a file we get the message:

 

"Internal Error Bad Record Index"

 

When this happens, several times we have found that all of the text and

pictures is gone from two (only two) pages in that file. Fortunately we have

backup copies which have so far always had the missing two pages. Again no

word of such a thing in the Help or literatures.

 

Aside from this, for some reason Windows (98 SE) doesn't seem to be

registering all of our fonts properly. They are there in the fonts folder

but the characters often (not always) look different in Pagemaker. This is

particularly noticable with the Devanagari and Bengali fonts which just show

a mess, but say they are there. Lastly we are also having some strange

things going on in Photoshop (6.0.1):

 

* While selecting with the Magic Wand tool it selects 10 or 20 pixels above

or below where we click, unless we zoom into maximum view.

 

* Layer style/color overlay, puts color over the whole picture, rather than

whatever we have selected. Other times it colors only a small portion of the

selection.

 

* We select something then go to: Edit/transform/scale (or other options

therein), at that time sometimes (not always) we find that although they are

showing, we cannot grab the top handles of the marquee. The sides and bottom

work fine.

 

So far we have tried reinstalling PM 7 and Photoshop -- didn't make any

difference; we tried installing PM 65 -- no luck; we tried opening the files

on another computer -- same problem; we reinstalled Windows and all our

software -- still no good; we installed the latest Norton Anti-virus,

updated it and did virus checks -- it says the computer is clean; finally we

purchased a new hardrive and re-installed everything -- the problem is still

there. We are familiar with these programs and have been producing several

publications a year with them and have never before experienced such

problems.

 

Could it be something with our motherboard ... or should we hire an

exorcist? If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.

 

Thanks.

 

Vaishnav das anudas abhas,

Madhavananda Das, member of Frustrated Publishers Anyonymous.