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Hidden windows list and crawling icons

Started by lewhoo, 2011.12.28, 18:21:58

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lewhoo

I've got two problems since installing ecs 2.0, one more and one less iritating.

1. The more irritating: My window lists is always hidden below left lower corner of the desktop. I can only see its upper right corner, grab it and enlarge enough to drag it out of hiding. The system remembers its size, but not the position and after a reboot I have to do the same. I imagine that this might be connected to ePager, but I have no virtual desktop where the window lists is supposed to be displayed... Can anyone help?

2. The second problem is that my desktop icons tend to crawl slowly up from reboot to reboot. I always have a slider on the right side of my desktop after reboot... Here again, I would be grateful for help :)

ivan

A couple of things .

Have you checked the screen resolution and have you checked if there is some icon off screen.

At one time I needed to check a new motherboard.  In doing so I used the an IDE hard disk that I had replaced with an SATA one.  The setup on that disk had been for my 28 inch monitor but I was using a 19 inch that I had available.  Even though SNAP recognised the new size of the monitor I still had a vertical scroll bar and some windows didn't show up when opened.  In the end I scrolled down and found an icon for the UPS that I had locked in place on the large screen.  When I unlocked it and moved it up the scroll bar disappeared and windows opened where I expected them.

Ihis may, or may not, be your problem but it is worth looking at.

ivan   

lewhoo

This was a fresh install of ecs 2.0, and the problem was from the very beginning. ertical bar is due to icon ouf of the screen, but when I move it, the icons are back within. However, ecs does not remember it and moves those icons upwards between reboots...

And still, that does not explain the windowlist problem...

sXwamp

From eCom 2.1 FAQ:

[ICON DRIFT ON THE DESKTOP]

Q) For some reason, I have started getting icon drift with the eCS 2.1 RC1 and
newer versions. The icons drift a small amout to the bottom of the desktop.

A) When using Carston Arnold's Cleanini55.zip and the command
   "Cleanini /c /delall /multipass /restart" the problem of the drifting icons
   goes away. I have confirmed this in both RC1 and RC2. This also includes the
   use of eCenter and eComCenter (WarpCenter) together on fresh installs.

(more details can be found at http://bugs.ecomstation.nl/view.php?id=1620)

"Using cleanini I saw a lot of "123456@10", "123456@20" and "123456@XFSB".
And some "123456@1020" entries, and also some "abcdef@XFSB" without a
belonging "abcdef@10" item.
Don't know what "@10" or "@XFSB" exactly means."

Rich Walsh explains:

These identify the window position, colors, & fonts for different
WPS views:

  @10 Icon
  @20 Properties
  @1010 Tree
  @1020 Details
  @XFSB XFolder Status Bar

An easier and more informative way to manage these (and reduce
your os2.ini's size) is to use my FPos utility:
   http://e-vertise.com/rws/fpos080.zip

This util is also included in http://e-vertise.com/rws/rws080.zip
which contains another useful utility, Iconomize, plus some
developer stuff for manipulating the WPS from other apps.

(from http://bugs.ecomstation.nl/view.php?id=2164)


RobertM

Quote from: lewhoo on 2011.12.28, 18:21:58
I've got two problems since installing ecs 2.0, one more and one less iritating.

1. The more irritating: My window lists is always hidden below left lower corner of the desktop. I can only see its upper right corner, grab it and enlarge enough to drag it out of hiding. The system remembers its size, but not the position and after a reboot I have to do the same. I imagine that this might be connected to ePager, but I have no virtual desktop where the window lists is supposed to be displayed... Can anyone help?


This MAY work. Open the window list, move and/or size it. Then use its sysmenu to close it.

If that fails, Open, it move it to another desktop, go to that desktop, then use its sysmenu to close it.

If THAT fails, remove ePager, see if the Window List gets created on the desktop, then reinstall/reactivate ePager

Yes, ePager will sometimes cause such issues, and not just with the window list.

(ICUDN: sysmenu=left side close/menu control)


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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lewhoo

I tried closing from sysmenu and moving to other desktop,if by this you mean menu->window->close of window list. Did not help. I also disabled ePager in "Screen", also did not help - did you mean this by "removing ePager"?

aschn

Quote from: lewhoo on 2011.12.29, 13:45:30
I tried closing from sysmenu and moving to other desktop,if by this you mean menu->window->close of window list. Did not help.

Deleting OS2.INI: PM_Workplace:WindowListPos -> SavePos should help.

Andreas

aschn

#7
Quote from: sXwamp on 2011.12.29, 00:45:07
From eCom 2.1 FAQ:

[ICON DRIFT ON THE DESKTOP]

What the FAQ doesn't mention is:

Paul Ratcliffe's hint (see the original eCS bugtracker entry http://bugs.ecomstation.nl/view.php?id=2164) to move all desktop objects a bit is the only one that helps here since some months. Previously, CleanIni was a tool that was able to help with that issue. But now it's sure that CleanIni causes that by itself.

What I noticed: When I grab a WPS object and begin to drag it a bit, there is for some objects a frame painted for the desktop: IIRC it was that one with round corners. After having moved all objects that cause that frame to show, the issue doesn't happen anymore (until I add new objects to the desktop). Important: a clean reboot must follow that. A WPS restart won't suffice if anything crashes the WPS thereafter.

Once I had a system where everything is reproducible, I played with that desktop objects a bit and moved a single object per reboot only. That shows that the issue was gone after I catch the last object that causes the WPS to paint the frame I've mentioned above. I could confirm that about 4 times after that, while for 2 times that didn't help: Then only making the inis smaller helped.

It seems to me as if the perfect workaround for that WPS bug can't be found.

Andreas

RobertM

Andreas and I have had similar experiences with this. This issue is a bug that has existed in Warp since at least the 4.5x releases.


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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RobertM

#9
Quote from: lewhoo on 2011.12.29, 13:45:30
I tried closing from sysmenu and moving to other desktop,if by this you mean menu->window->close of window list. Did not help. I also disabled ePager in "Screen", also did not help - did you mean this by "removing ePager"?

What I meant was double-clicking the sysmenu control (the square block on the top left) after moving it to another desktop and then going to that desktop - or... (the better option):

After positioning it on the active desktop. Inotherwords, "CTRL-ESC", pull up the pager, look for the Window List, move it (via the PAGER) to the active desktop. Close the Window List using the sysmenu. Try CTRL-ESC again - if the window list appears in the correct virtual screen, do a proper shutdown and restart of the system.

Now, an interesting bug I've found in WSeB 4.52 (and presumably MCP) is that you may have to repeat this process twice. For some reason, the ini files are not always flushed to disk - that could be due to the ini close/shutwdown/flush routines in xWP/eWP, but I never really dug into it - I haven't really changed icon or window positions (of anything, much less the window list) in years.


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
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Pete

Hi All

I may be wrong but seem to recall that the "drifting icons" problem is something to do with the system closing Warp/eComCenter at Shutdown/Reboot. If Warp/eComCenter is not actually in use the system starts it to close it.

I've never seen this problem myself - probably because I do not use e/xCenter and do use Warp/eComCenter.


Regards

Pete



RobertM

#11
Quote from: Pete on 2011.12.30, 03:15:45
...I may be wrong but seem to recall that the "drifting icons" problem is something to do with the system closing Warp/eComCenter at Shutdown/Reboot. If Warp/eComCenter is not actually in use the system starts it to close it...

If that is the case, then perhaps this is a solution:


- Start the WarpCenter (or open its properties dialog)
- Go into its settings and ENABLE "Show only when mouse is over Center's position"
- Close the WarpCenter
- Do a proper shutdown
- Restart the machine

By enabling that option in the WarpCenter properties, even if WarpCenter is loaded (by whatever means) the Desktop folder/dialog/thingy never gets resized and we should not run into issues.



And for those bored:


The WPS Desktop is some weird combination of a system modal dialog box folder (titlebar and all). If the WarpCenter is on top (WITHOUT that option enabled in step two above), the dialog box folder thingy that it is, gets resized and the WarpCenter gets placed over its title bar (the one most people will never see). If WarpCenter is placed at the bottom, the modal dialog box folder gets resized with the titlebar off screen above the edge of the viewable area (where it is normally hidden) and a blank region on the bottom below the dialog box folder thingy is where the WarpCenter will get loaded.

Either way, the viewspace gets decreased by the WarpCenter's height, and the folder alignment gets screwed up.





And finally, I never really looked into what the heck the Desktop really is - I just know from "unlocking" it so I could control it, that it basically looks like a system modal dialog box (no borders, titlebar with no controls, and is usually (unless you tinker like me) the utmost bottom object in the hierarchy) and acts much like a folder in how it responds to mouse actions, icons and such.

Thus, it seems to exhibit characteristics and behavior of both a system modal dialog box (for those who don't know what one is, think one of the "SYS3175" pop-ups if you don't have SUPPRESSPOPUPS enabled) and the characteristics and behavior of a folder.



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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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lewhoo

The only solution about window list that worked for a moment here was deleting OS2.INI: PM_Workplace:WindowListPos -> SavePos, savin inig to other file, rebooting into command line, copying the other file over os2.ini and rebooting into PM. However, after reboot again, window list is in the hidden position. Apparenlty eCS somehow overwrites the position with the hidden value in the ini...

About icons, so far I tried only moving them, but it did not help.