On 20 Nov 98 at 19:08, David Hurst wrote:

> When attempting to run a 3d chat program (World Chat), I frequently
> (not always) get a message that says "WATCOM Win386   out of
> selectors" and stops. I am running win95 with all the upgrades on a
> P166MMX machine with just the usual components..
>
> What would be causing that message.. and the inability to execute
> the program ??

  Selectors provide access to different "segments" within the PC's
memory space.  A typical program has one for its code, one for its
data, and one for its stack, and that's about all it needs.  The OS
ofcourse also uses some selectors internally.
  Machines since the 386 have provided a system table of "global"
selectors, and an additional table per process for private "local"
selectors.  Apparently whichever table this program gets any
additional selectors it needs from is getting full.

  If this is the local table, then I'd guess that the program has a
serious bug that you should report to its makers.
  If this is in the global table [the message doesn't indicate
which...], it could still be a bug in this application.  Or perhaps
in some other running application.  Or it might be the manifestation
of a virus or a network attack.
  Does the application run for some time and then get this error?
One common type of bug -- a "resource leak" occurs when a resource is
allocated and then abandonned without being returned to the system.
For instance, if the chat program -- or the video driver --
allocated a fresh selector each time there was a new line of text to
display, and never freed it, eventually there would be no more
available.

David G

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