https://www.dropbox.com/s/sergx3nmunx4i ... p.mp4?dl=0

Heres the video of the problem dragging icons in, when the slide and magnify animation was turned on, turning it off fixed the problem

Thanks for the video.

I think I know what it might be. Is that the NextSTART taskbar under the dock in the video?

Something else I would like to add: it's a bit frustrating when the backup I get does not mimic the conditions I see in the pictures or the video, because any changes you've made to the dock settings in the mean time might prevent me from being able to reproduce the bug here.

For instance, when you mentioned the slide animation (or that the slide animation was apparently responsible for some of the problems) while talking about sub-docks at the same time, I (wrongly, I admit) assumed you meant the animation used when opening *sub-docks*.

But no, you actually meant the auto-hide/show animation for the *main* dock.

The problem with this type of issues is that I need to reproduce the conditions there exactly, because the devil is *ALWAYS* in the little details.

For instance, I'm still waiting for your reply regarding that being the NextSTART taskbar or not in your video, but my guess is that it is, and that the dock bouncing up and down has to do with a combination of things: bumping the bottom screen edge activates the dock *but at the same time* it also activates the taskbar (i.e.; brings it forward) which removes focus from the dock while it's playing the animation and thus makes hide again. Or something like that.

However, this would only happen under a *very specific* combination of settings (for instance, the setting that activates the taskbar on an edge bump also being being on, the dock overlapping the taskbar, hide delays being set to minimum, etc...), which is what makes issues like this so hard to debug and fix.

i do remember i had options like this at one point

dock properties: position tab > auto-hide for maximized applications WAS CHECKED

dock properties: behaviour tab > auto-hide the dock after a shortdelay WAS UNCHECKED

and the slide animation for the dock appearing on, and magnify on, and slide animation for sub docks on too


at that time i shut down nextstart at windows boot up but i DID NOT CHECK, "do not start next start on windows startup"

so maybe it was just hidden and not disabled?

i would like to permanently disable it, but it hasnt appeared since i checked that option


i think if you like you can rest now regarding this problem as i no longer have it, although the settings combination did cause a problem, i no longer have it, and i dont want to recreate it incase i cannot fix it

but those are as specific as i can get now i believe

thank you so much for all your help on this issue, im sure i will have more questions for you soon though.

once again, amazing program and support, thanks buddy

No problem.

I just don't like bugs, no matter how hard they are to come by, and especially not the 'application crash' kind of bugs.

One question though: I still did not understand if that was the NextSTART taskbar behind the dock in that video or the Windows taskbar?

thats windows task bar, 3 lines high, and original windows xp style windows rather than icons

would you recommend i learn to use nextstart over start8? i gotta admit, start8 doesnt seem to find certain things, like disk management, disk cleanup

Depends, try it first.

The NextSTART menu is old school (only a single pane) and doesn't have a Search box. On the other hand, it is 100% configurable via either drag & drop or the built-in Menu Editor.

You can also create as many different menus as you want and attach them to different things (icons on the Quick Launch area of the NextSTART taskbar, hotspot buttons on your desktop, etc...).

DOH! Figured out and managed to reproduce the bouncing bug.

It has nothing to do with magnification being on, but with that option above. See the Explorer window you were dragging the shortcut from? It was maximized *and* it was the foreground window (which triggers the auto-hide for maximized applications feature).

Unfortunately when dragging the shortcut into the dock, the trigger to auto-hide the dock for maximized applications was not being temporarily disabled as it should... and thus the dock kept activating and hiding again.

Chiming in with similar sounding crashes of Winstep Xtreme. For me, WSX crashes several times a day. I've setup a program called RestartOnCrash which re-runs WSX when the program crashes, so I only have to experience a minor delay while it re-runs.

Windows 10, Surface Pro 4.

I'm trying to figure out where the WSX crash log would be, can't find it.

But, when WSX crashes, it can be when I'm dragging something over to a subdock, or sometimes inexplicably when I'm closing another unrelated program... boom.. WSX crashes.

I can't imagine not using WSX forever in Windows -- it's that good. I'm hoping the crashing will be resolved in an update.

Look, Winstep Xtreme is always running on my computer (Windows 7 64 bit), and I run all types of tools, applications and games.

It never crashes, and if I can't reproduce something here, I can't fix it.

The fact that I can't reproduce it here doesn't mean the issue doesn't exist either, of course, but it does mean that it's probably caused by some unusual combination of settings or a weird interaction with 3rd party applications.

For instance, in another thread a user was reporting that NextSTART always crashed under very specific circumstances (and only when running a particular RDP application). Turns out the culprit was neither NextSTART nor the RDP application: he updated his video card drivers and the crashes went away.

If you have a buggy shell context menu handler (those extra options added by 3rd party software that appear on Explorer's right-click context menu, e.g.; 'Scan with Eset Smart Security', 'Open with WinRAR', etc...) WSX can crash whenever you right click on an item.

Many years ago, a buggy but unfortunately very popular Logitech webcam control panel applet corrupted the stack and caused WSX to crash whenever it tried to show the contents of the Windows Control Panel.

Also many years ago, WSX would refuse to connect to the Internet, but only on systems with nVidia/Intel graphic combos.

I was able to fix both of the above situations by implementing a work-around - but only because both conditions were popular enough for me to be able to find a pattern, (i.e.; what those users had in common; the Logitech webcam and the nVidia/Intel combo).

If you install Stardock's IconPackager and later uninstall it, WSX can suddenly start showing a blank page for most application icons instead of the proper executable icon. This is an issue with Stardock's IP that doesn't properly clean up after itself even though SD has been aware of this for YEARS, not with WSX - but it ends up affecting WSX.

As you can see, there are many things that can cause WSX to crash or glitch and none of them related to WSX itself, or at least not because of any bugs in the WSX applications themselves.

Again, this does not mean WSX is bug-free. I don't think any program really is. But if the issue is related to a very specific combination of settings that only you and perhaps a couple of other people in the world use, then before I can help you, you have to begin by helping yourself as this user did.

By this I mean that you MUST try to find a pattern to what causes those crashes, so you can point me in the right direction. Experiment with different settings to see if the crashes/issues go away. Backup your settings and restore them on a different computer to see if the issues persist. Etc...

I'm watching for an explicit repeatable pattern.. Will let you know.

In the meantime, where might I find relevant crash log?

Thx again.

The crash logs will not tell you or me anything, unfortunately.

I have some early, but not definitive, observations of circumstances surrounding a WSX crash -- ie all docks and shelf disappear, and sometimes all hell breaks loose forcing a logout/restart.

In some cases it appears related to Win 10 itself. Especially if the device (Surface Pro 4) has been hibernating then reawakened, it sometimes isn't long before WSX goes nuts and crashes.

But, the most common denominator so far is Google Chrome browser... interacting with it, but mostly closing it. Many times of the times WSX crashes is when I quit Chrome and immediately WSX crashes... kaboom. Chrome can be a real mess at times, as we know.

Like you said, there are so many possible 3rd party apps and Win10 things that might trip-up WSX.

I'll continue to try to identify a truly repeatable process that leads to a crash. Until then, I'm quite ok w/ the minor annoyance, as RestartOnCrash brings the WSX interface back up w/in a few seconds of a crash. I just take it in stride.

Yeah, but in this case it should have no effect.

Try to become self-aware about the small details:

1. How do you usually quit Chrome? By closing the window itself as normal (x button on the top right corner of the window) or via the taskbar?

2. Also, it might only *appear* to be Chrome because that's what you use a lot (so it usually ends up as the last button on the NextSTART taskbar). Do the crashes also happen when closing windows belonging to other applications?

Also, when you say WSX crashes, it's only the NextSTART component, right? WorkShelf (docks, Shelf, etc...) keeps running?

The workshelf stuff -- all docks and the shelf -- vanish when the crash event happens. I don't have a NextStart taskbar running -- just using docks and shelf, though NextStart is running (it's in the system tray with hotspots enabled).

I'm sometimes fuzzy about what NextSTART vs. NeXus vs. Workshelf are, though the Workshelf docks and shelf seem obvious to me.

I'll continue to observe and try to capture as much meta info about the circumstances as I can. Might even try capturing a screencast video while I work, and then edit down to the relevant bits leading up to the crash.

I'll also be glad to see the major Win10 update in a couple months -- it may clear up many other issues, including the Winstep phenomena. Of course, I'll probably wait at least a month so I can learn how stable the update is before installing -- unless Microsoft force feeds it to me!

Thanks again.

BTW, even though we're talking about 'issues', the fact is that the Winstep tools work wonderfully ***most of the time*** and make it very worth the effort.