Author Topic: Shadows on the desktop stopped working  (Read 11324 times)

ivan

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Re: Shadows on the desktop stopped working
« Reply #15 on: October 19, 2017, 01:13:18 am »
Hi Dariusz,

I have seen what you describe once on one machine.  The operator was monitoring some equipment via its web interface using firefox.  After a couple of weeks with firefox up 24/7 firefox just disappeared from the desktop and the machine locked up.  I was called in because OS/2 would start but die when the desktop started.  The client needing to get the computer up and running I pulled the hard disk and replaced it with the mirror disk (cloned OS image with data updated every 5 minutes).  Inspecting the pulled disk we found several things with os2.ini reduced from about 2 MB to a few K and os2sys.ini totally absent, there were also a few other configuration files either truncated or filled with garbage.  After much head scratching we were of the opinion that the long continious use of firefox somehow caused an overwrite of the section of memory where the ini and config files were stored (the fact there was html code in the garbage in the files pointed to this).

Why this happened I can't say because we reformatted the disk and re-imaged it with the standard OS/2 image for that client, replaced the disk and returned the mirror disk and it hasn't happened again in 3 years continuous use - the only difference being that they close firefox at the weekends.

A possible way of tracking down the problem requires you to have a bootable maintenance partition or a bootable cd with some tools on it also it might be a good idea to start with running memtest from a bootable cd. 

Run your main system for a few days then shut down, reboot using the maintenance partition and have a look at the ini files in the main OS2 directory (you will need an ini editor to see what there is in them) and check for any obvious garbage.  If there is garbage there, depending on what it is, it might indicate what program and/or dll is causing the problem.  If you can pin that down you are well on the way to solving the problem.
 

Andi B.

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Re: Shadows on the desktop stopped working
« Reply #16 on: October 19, 2017, 08:55:59 am »
Have you tried both Shift keys together too?

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: Shadows on the desktop stopped working
« Reply #17 on: October 19, 2017, 10:36:49 pm »
Have you tried both Shift keys together too?
Yes, left Sh works. I can remember that, years ago, any Sh key has worked and that Ulrich had answered this behavior in XWP's user list on a question how the panic dialog can be activated.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2017, 11:34:48 pm by Andreas Schnellbacher »