Winstep Nexus Ultimate has been working fine for a long time. All of a sudden there is a delay whenever I start it. The docks appear but are unusable for a period of about 30 seconds afterward. The mouse cursor shows the little spinning circle when over any of the docks.

Once Nexus becomes usable everything seems fine. 30 seconds doesn't seem like a lot but until recently it started up almost instantly and this is rather frustrating.

I am using Nexus Ultimate 14.11.1007 on Windows 7. I have watched the Task Manager, it doesn't seem like it is working during that "hang time". It's more like Nexus is waiting for something, then times out and starts functioning. Any suggestions how to resolve or debug this are very much appreciated.

Randy

Ouch, sorry, looks like I missed your post.

Most likely it's because of one of the shortcuts or icon images you are using on the dock. For instance, if the source of one of the images is a network drive, a slow starting external drive, or something otherwise in the web - instead of a local drive - things could temporarily 'hang' until the system has had time to initialize all the resources.

Question, Jorge...

If it is one of my shortcuts (many of them on multiple docks), should I be able to narrow it down to a dock by disabling them one at a time? Or is is likely that it would still cause the delay even if on a disabled dock?

Randy

I would start by making a backup of your settings, if you haven't already.

Then I would reset the dock contents to factory settings (Preferences -> Advanced -> Troubleshooting Options -> Reset Docks and Shelves).

This, after restarting again to see if the problem persists, would give me an indication if the problem lies with the dock shortcuts themselves, some weird setting or something else.

If it doesn't happen, then the problem has to do with one of the dock shortcuts. If it does, then I would use the 'Reset Everything' option to make sure it is a settings issue and not something else.

Either way, you then restore from your backup and go on a happy hunting - but this time with a better idea of where the problem actually lies.

Let me know what you find!

I appear to have painted myself into a corner. I "Reset Docks and Shelves". They all disappeared. I restarted Nexus-Ultimate, everything's gone. No docks, no tray icon, nothing. I can't get back into Preferences to restore the backup or to "Reset Everything". I'm stuck.

Is there some way to start Nexus Ultimate Preferences from the command line?

Run Nexus Ultimate, Press CTRL+F11.

And, as a very last resort (if you like to get yourself into corners so much that you disabled even the Preferences hotkey ) there is always the option to start Nexus Ultimate from the command line with 'ultimate.exe -setup' (IIRC lol)

The Ctrl+F11 got me back in. I was then able to restore the backup. The problem turned out to be, as you had speculated earlier, a shortcut to a spreadsheet on a network drive. The network drive doesn't become accessible until after VPN has been activated. Is there any way around this? Something where Nexus Ultimate won't attempt to connect to the spreadsheet until the shortcut is clicked on?

Thanks for your help,
Randy

Change the shortcut's icon to something else on a local drive, that should do it.

Perfect! Thanks again.