I have installed several instances of Nexus Dock satisfactorily. The latest installation results in the 'Preferences' button, either by clicking the 'Nexus' icon, or right clicking and selecting 'Preferences' in the drop down, opening a Windows installer.

I have now installed 'Nexus' a total of three times on this machine. At first, clicking the icon opened an installer for an old program no longer installed, and of course the installer did nothing and required Task Manager to close it. Then I uninstalled 'Nexus' and did a deep registry clean - and even then manually removed any remaining traces of that old program still in the registry. I re-installed 'Nexus', and this time it opened an installer, but now it was an undefined one. After uninstalling again and doing another registry deep clean, this time targeting 'Nexus' registry entries, I installed 'Nexus' for the third time. The problem continues.

Removing the < HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinSTEP2000 > registry entry, and replacing it with the registry key from a successful instance of Nexus, gave me all the settings I need, but still the same issues with the 'Nexus' button - and I cannot get the preferences dialogue screen.

This seems seriously weird. Any clues?

Are you running AutoCAD or do you have it installed on your system? It is known for doing this in 3rd party applications, and even though it is a known issue. and has been for a long time, they apparently never bothered fixing it.

Otherwise, let the Windows Installer finish, perhaps that will fix the problem. This is not the fault of the Winstep application, normally it happens when a 3rd party installer screws things up with 'install-on-demand' for a common Windows DLL used in many other applications for stuff like common UI controls, etc...

Thank you for the suggestion. No, I have never used or installed AutoCAD.

It is likely that there has been some malware damage to the installation, and so as I go about fixing that, this issue might be resolved.The malware has never been identified by several of the tools I have used to find it. I do hope that the various repairs, which seem to be heading convergently toward a real and lasting fix, will make this right too.

Again, thank you.

Sorry - I forgot to re-iterate that the Windows Installer referred to is not authentic.

By that I mean that initially it referred to an installer for a program that had been uninstalled long ago. After a registry clean for that key, the Windows Installer it called was un-named.

Needless to say, these installers never complete, and the 'Cancel' button is greyed out and does not function. Task manager shows that CPU usage is 100%, (Explorer makes up abut 50-60% of that) and shows no Windows Installer entry to 'end task'. The only way out is a reboot following a hard shutdown. It is the only way to get out of it!

Cheers,
Max Williams