got this on my 17th day of trial, after creating 2nd level subdocks (subdocks within subdocks). Nextstart starts normally but WS keeps initializing forever and does no longer show up again. How can I get WShelf back?

Ouch. This will probably be a bit difficult to diagnose.

1 - Are you confortable using the Windows Registry Editor?

2 - Are you running the latest Winstep Xtreme version (8.11) ?

Yes and Yes, but this is even more painful: I uninstalled and reinstalled it wo/ no better results. Then I reinstalled all anew abandoning my settings. But I still have the problem I had before WS stopped initializing: I cannot drag and drop items from Windows Explorer or the start menu to the docks. I think this is the real issue behind WS behaviour.

I guess my first question would be: when did Workshelf stop working? Was it at exactly the same time you created your second level of subdocks?

Anything else change?

I kind of hoped I could catch you before you did something like this... we could have saved your settings and I could have tried to figure out what was causing it, and, if it was a bug in WorkShelf, fix it... Now it's too late.



My bet is that you are running under Vista and that you are, somehow, running WorkShelf elevated (do you get a UAC prompt?). Programs running with high privilege in Vista cannot accept dropped items from applications running with normal privileges because of the UIPI (User Interface Privilege Isolation).

Thanks guys for your quick reply. I should be more patient next time

@ Jorge: Not too much lost, anyway. I'm not running Vista, but XP SP3 and was using Nexus with both, Shelves disabled and enabled. Nexus did always prevent me from adding items to the docks via drag and drop, no matter which circumstances (So did WS on shelves too). So I did it through the "add items" dialog, copying an pasting the properties information from the files (shortcuts, progs) I wanted to move into the dock. I had no prompts of any kind, although your guess sounds very compelling - but no Vista anyway.

@ kwickone / both: I was adding subdocks to the subdocks I created manually. WS crashed twice when moving items from the "primary" subdock to its secondary one. But it was still restarting normally, until today when I booted the system again. In total, I had 2 second level subdocks working pefectly.

Well, it's the first time I've heard about drag & drop not working on XP, but then I did a search for 'xp drag and drop not working' in Google. Wow. Try it.

Thing is, were/are you able to drop items into the main NextSTART menu? If it doesn't work with docks and the shelf, it probably won't work with NextSTART either. But you sound like drag & drop works within Explorer, which makes all this rather strange. Even weirder is that you seem to be able to drag & drop items within the Shelf and docks!!!

Do you have any other applications that accept drag & drop? If so, are they still accepting files dragged from Explorer?

This could also be a DLL problem. One of the solutions I saw was to re-register some system DLLs:

Start, Run, and either type CMD and paste the below as a box into the CMD session, or enter each line one-by-one:

regsvr32 Oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 urlmon.dll
regsvr32 Shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 Msjava.dll
regsvr32 Actxprxy.dll
regsvr32 Mshtml.dll
regsvr32 Browseui.dll
regsvr32 Shell32.dll
regsvr32 riched20.dll

As for the crashes you had when moving items between sub-docks: were there any errors? Did you get the errors because the source sub-dock closed in the mean time? Can you still more or less recall what might have triggered the errors or a way to reproduce them here?

Thanks,

Thanks Jorge. It seems indeed to be a drag'n'drop issue. msjava.dll and riched20.dll do not seem to be available and I found a thread on the web with a lot of possible solutions. Will reply with results when I'm through.

Thanks Gabri_L. Please do let me know if you manage to figure out what the problem was and the fix...

Solved. Not to my entire satisfaction, though.

Thought it was a drag'n'drop issue as I hadn't msjava.dll, but this is irrelevant (http://www.dependencywalker.com/faq.html). Unloaded a large series of processes and cleansed my prog files. Nothing. Tried in Safe Mode. Nada. But then, I found a forum discussion excluding the use of a 2nd language for non-Unicode as a source of this sort of problems. Stubborn as I am, I've given it a try and voil'a . After restarting Nexus accepted shortcuts dragged over from Windows Explorer!!

Unfortunately, I need this language feature, as I have plenty of folders and files with unicode characters. Winstep xtreme was the only application with drag'n'drop issues, and only a few do work with unicode (e.g. ACDsee 10 doesn't). I hope you know of a way to get around this.

FYI, when I dragged a shortcut from the start menu to a Nexus dock the start menu didn't close by pressing the Win key. I installed WXtreme on another PC wo/ 2nd language support and found it closed normally. Besides, in Safe mode, WS crashed once as well while simply dragging over a shortcut.

I'm enthusiastic about WXtreme. So keep me posted!

Thanks

Winstep Xtreme is developed on VB5, which unfortunately does NOT support Unicode natively.

One question: how do you add a 2nd language for non-Unicode programs? On Vista it only seems to allow me to select a single language (Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Administrative tab -> Change System Locale).

In XP you go Regional Settings, Advanced tab, Language for non-Unicode programs.



I had never expected it to. Wouldn't help either... Even Adobe don't use unicode consistently. The solution is this 2nd language support in Windows. I can rename anything on Winstep docks to German or Chinese using Unicode thanks to this feature.

Maybe there is more behind this but what I found so far is an issue involving this language feature - not Unicode - and Winstep.

I can drag stuff between Adobe Photoshop and Explorer without any interference from Regional Settings.

I also continuously translate legal stuff with the help of VB based apps and drag and drop texts as a normal business. So I don't think restrictions come from that side either. I'm probly missing the right settings. There might be other multilingual users using Winstep who could give input.

This may be a similar problem so I'm posting it here: I recently did a full hard disk format and reinstall of all systems and software, including Winstep. Now, workshelf is hanging on every fresh boot of the computer; I can see it there in Windows Task Manager, but it is not initializing. I have to force it to close and then when I re-start it manually, all is well until my next full reboot of the computer. Not sure if this is related, but I got my first blue screen of death in a loong while today "driver_corrupted_mmpool". Rebooted and all seems ok, but jeez! Any thoughts on the Workshelf initialization issue?

Do you have an external hard drive connected to your system?

Since WorkShelf initializes properly the second time, it seems to me like it is waiting for something that hasn't initialized yet because the system is still busy booting up.

There are two ways you can test for this: prevent WorkShelf from running automatically and then run it manually once system activity has calmed down, or wait when WorkShelf hangs and see if it eventually starts responding after a while...

Please let me know your findings...

Just wanted to give you an example for you to understand better:

One of the things WorkShelf does while it is initializing is checking the number of files in the Recycle Bin and the total disk size used by them. It does this via a single API call: SHQueryRecycleBin.

The problem is that each drive has its own recycle bin folder and SHQueryRecycleBin does not return until all drives have been scanned. If you have a drive that is 'sleeping' when WorkShelf is initializing, the call will NOT return until that drive (and all others in the same situation) has spun up. A drive can take 20-30 seconds to spin up, and, until SHQueryRecycleBin returns, WorkShelf will appear 'frozen'.