Every time I alter anything in the NextStep preferences dialogue it causes my Start menu to disappear! Clicking the start button just brings up a small untitled menu box with the word "empty" in it! Any ideas?

Thank you

THe Doc

I forgot to mention: rightclicking start button brings up start bar still. The only way I've found to get the menu back is to uninstall and then reinstall NextStart

To help you out I need a step-by-step description of the things you do that cause the menu to 'disappear'.

I will reinstall and let you know precise details asap, TY

OK here goes:

1 Reinstall Winstep full pak.
2 Start Next Start.
3 Everything appears fine, start menu reflects the Windows one as expected
4.Open preferences,change themes a couple of times, no problem encountered
5. click "Menu preferences" button to open tab.
6. In menu preferences tab click button to open "Bitmap and Titlebar buttons skinning preferences" dialogue.
7. Click "Cancel" to close dialogue.
8.Click ok to close "preferences" dialogue.
9. Start menu dissapears to be replaced by untitled menu box with the word empty in it. Themes with no taskbar(eg Turbo Deluxe) also lose the start button.

Hmmm... Not sure what might be going on. Ok, instead of re-installing the full pak:

Open NextSTART Preferences and go to the Global Preferences tab. Click on the Restore button in the Backup and Restore section. Now select the 'NsDefault.nbk' file, which holds the default (at startup) NextSTART settings. Click Ok to close NextSTART Preferences. This should get your default menu back.

Now do the steps you described in the previous post again. Does your menu display 'Empty' again? If so, go open NextSTART Preferences and click on Ok (just in case). Still displaying 'Empty'? Open NextSTART Preferences one more time and go to the Global Preferences tab. This time click on the Backup button. This will create a *.nbk file with the name you specify - please send this file to support@winstep.net for me to take a look at.

Also, what OS are you running under? Are you running as the Admin? What NextSTART version do you have installed on your system?

Restoring the 'NsDefault.nbk' file did NOT restore Next Start to it's original state, still no sign of start bar or start button! however I found that the entire desktop had become a hotspot in that left clicking on any empty space on desktop would bring up the start menu!

I then reinstalled yet again by uninstalling entire pack, deleting all reg entries relating to Winstep with regedit and then installing pack again. When I ran the prog for the first time everything appeared ok but i tried exiting the prog and then running it again and the same fault occurred.

I'll send you the 'NsDefault.nbk' file to see what you make of it.

regards

DOC_G

Thanks for sending me your NsDefault.nbk file - I figured out what the problem is thanks to it: you have a truckload - and I mean a truckload - of Quicklaunch items.

Up until version 3.0, NextSTART supported a maximum of 36 hotspots. That was doubled for version 3.0, in that NextSTART now supports a maximum of 72 hotspots. Unfortunately, it seems nobody ever used more than the initial 36 hotspots, otherwise the bug your problem enabled me to find would have been spoted and fixed earlier.

You see, when NextSTART first runs it fetches all your Quicklaunch items and converts them into hotspots. This is because the QuickLaunch area in the NextSTART startbar is not the same as the Windows Quicklaunch area, although it is initially filled with items from it. This is done because hotspots are functionally superior to simple Windows shortcuts: with hotspots you can not only launch programs as open menus, run internal NextSTART commands, etc... In practice this means you can add items to the NextSTART Quicklaunch section which are used not just to launch programs but also for, say, opening menus or whatever...

The problem occured because you have so many Quicklaunch items that the pre-version 3.0 36 hotspot limit was overrun (in fact, it actually reached the new 72 hotspot limit). Unfortunately there is a bug in NextSTART that causes the upper 36 hotspots (hotspots 36 to 71) to overwrite the first 36 hotspots when information is saved and later re-loaded from the Registry - this is why your main NextSTART menu was lost. In fact, it wasn't really the menu itself, but the information about hotspot 0 that got corrupted.

I hope my explanation of the problem is clear enough. At the moment and until we release NextSTART version 3.2 (which is just about to happen), other than deleting the items in your QuickLaunch area (located at "C:\Documents and Settings\Paul\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\") or moving them somewhere else before re-installing and running NextSTART, there isn't much you can do.

How about moving the shortcuts in "C:\Documents and Settings\Paul\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\" to another folder and then making a Folder tab in WorkShelf that points to the new location? Also, WorkShelf is much more suitable for what you were trying to do with the QuickLaunch area, specially since it allows you to organize items by category. Personally I don't think neither the Windows taskbar nor the NextSTART taskbar are the place to put over 71 Quick Launch items, but that is just my opinion.

Anyway, if you decide to wait instead, version 3.2 of NextSTART which fixes this problem should be released later this week - just don't ask me what will happen with 71 Quicklaunch items using up all the available space in the NextSTART Startbar.

Well I actually counted 56 items in my quicklauch menu so I'm not sure where you get the figure of 71+ from but it sounds like you've got to the root of the problem. I'll remove most of these items and see if that sorts it.

It may seem a lot of items to you but for me it was the simplest way to access the programs that I use fairly frequently. In practice I only have the 9 shortcuts that I use most frequently showing and the rest would be accessible by a single click on the taskbar arrow symbol.

Thanks for your help, i will keep you informed of my progress

regards

THE DOC

Well I made a new windows toolbar folder and transferred all but my most frequently used shortcuts to that leaving only 13 shortcuts in the quicklaunch folder. I can access the new toolbar in the same way as before so my normal windows taskbar workmode is unaffected. I then reinstalled Next start and everything is now working fine

cheers for the help

regards

The Doc