In Nexus, when I have the show tasks option selected, many separate applications are displayed with the same (incorrect) application icon.

When I manually edit an application's task icon that seems to be duplicated, all the other (still unrelated) task icons are changed to the new, still incorrect icon.

For example:

I have Thunderbird x64, Firefox x64, Helium music manager, and two Directory Opus tasks running.

The Thunderbird, Firefox, and both Opus icons are displayed using the Thunderbird's default app icon - so I have 4 tasks all displayed as envelopes.

Now, if I manually select one Opus task, and select the correct icon (from the application's exe resource), all 4 tasks now suddenly change to the same icon.

What's really confusing me is that some other applications (World Time, Quickbooks, Audition, and others) all display their correct icons every time.

Has anyone else come across this problem? If so, how can I fix it?

System is XP x64 build 3790 SP2 + all hotfixes, ATI X1600 dual monitor display, WorkShelf 2.03.0546, NextControls.ocx 1.00.0148, Region.dll 1.00.0001
Thanks for any ideas!
[EDIT]
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention - when I do try and drag Thunderbird or Firefox (or any other 64-bit application that's NOT in the \Program Files (x86)\ folder path), Workshelf insists on not using the correct application icon - it always uses the black/white 'WS' icon, and I have to manually edit it.
Also, any application like Media Player Resource kit or any other application that uses a HKEY ID to register its icon resources, doesn't get its icon displayed correctly. Sometimes I can manually specify the app's registration key and WS will find and display the right icon, other times it complains that there is no icon resource available, even though the icon is displayed in the icon browse box.

All this does seem related. And I can verify that icons that seem to work properly under the start menu (i.e. the recent applications list), sometimes don't display correctly in WorkShelf OR Nexus OR NextStart. I guess it's a 64-bit thing, but I'm not sure.
[/EDIT]

I can confirm that Nexus, WorkShelf, and NextStart all seem to have great difficulty managing 64-bit applications.

Any 32-bit application is displayed and handled fine using any of the Winstep suite. But 64-bit applications (i.e. applications that are installed in \Program Files\ instead of \Program Files (x86)\, and which use the 64-bit System32 instead of the 32-bit SysWOW64 folder) all cause major problems with Workshelf and Nexus and NextStart.

The difficulties do extend to dragging and dropping - I created a dock from a working WorkShelf tab, and this appeared fine, until I dragged it onto an existing dock placeholder - and the entire dock disappeared, then the main Nexus dock closed, then Workshelf shut down completely, with no error messages.

I wish I'd done some more testing of actual 64-bit applications, instead of just finding the (mainly 32-bit business) apps didn't crash and Winstep didn't die and assuming the rest of the Winstep tools worked the same way. That's my fault.

I'm happy to help by providing any error logs, configs, etc, if that would help.

Ok, first of all my apologies for the delay in replying - it happens at times, real life gets in the way...

It's very hard for me to diagnose any XP 64 bit problems for the simple fact that I don't have any 64 bit version of Windows here - I have to rely on 3rd party reports.



Ok, try the following to see if it makes any difference: open WorkShelf Preferences, navigate to the Shelf Icon Preferences tab and unselect the 'Show Application icons for sizes over 32x32'. Let me know.



Maybe Windows is, behind the scenes, re-directing file read requests to the wrong folder? Does this still happen after unselecting the setting described above?



Hmmm... This might be a bug not related to the 64 bit sub-system at all? Was the source WorkShelf shelf a 'Regular Shelf'? Can you reproduce the problem every time? Was the sub-dock back when you re-started WorkShelf? And the main dock?

Ah, forgot to add: as a registered Winstep user, I gave you access to the Beta Software Discussion forum. There is a Winstep user there, Tbeller, that is also running a 64 bit version of Windows (in this case Vista). Maybe the two of you can compare problems directly and report back to me? I think he ran XP 64 bit before, but he never mentioned any of the problems you seem to be having.

Jorge, no need to apologise - I understand about 'life' (Like you, I used to have one, once upon a time )

As to your suggestions and questions :
1) I've disabled the "show app icons over 32x32", and that did not seem to change the problem. I also tried using just 16x16 (and the other size icons) in Nexus, and disabling all the special effects, and disabling/enabling the snapshot (I had it disabled), and nothing seems to make a visible difference.

I also stopped and restarted the 64-bit apps, and also stopped/restarted Workshelf, with no apparent change in the behaviour of 64-bit app icon drawing.

2) After changing the "use app icon" setting above, dragging a 64-bit app to any dock (WS standard, nexus, nexus sub-dock) still results in the default WS icon, so there is no change there either.

3) The dock crash (dock completely disappeared and crashed Workshelf - for the first time ever) has not happened again, despite many tries to repeat it. Woo Hoo! (or "Uh Oh...") But...

4) You were right. The docks don't "disappear" when a dock is dropped on them, they just automatically collapse to the Nexus icon if the "collapse to edge" is turned off. I'm so sorry to waste your time on that, I should have re-read the collapse description in the help.

I don't use Folder shelves, I use other applications to manage folders for me. And I've removed all the "non-standard shelf" tabs from all the shelves, except the primary Nexus dock, which I'm wanting to use for my task manager (which is why I'd like to fix the problem with the icons).

I'll try and answer the other suggestions in the other threads.

Thanks again for your help!

Here's an interesting thing I noticed.

I had my usual 64-bit applications open plus a couple of 32-bit apps, and NS showed all the 64-bit apps using the same wrong icons in the NS taskbar (the 64-bit apps seem to all use the icon from the last 64-bit app to start up). The 32-bit apps had all their correct icons.

Then I dragged a "random" icon file on to one of the 64-bit task buttons in the startbar. Immediately the cursor changed to an hourglass, and nothing seemed to happen - until I moved the mouse, then ALL applications (including the 32-bit apps) displayed the same icon I just dropped!

So I dragged ANOTHER icon on to one of the 32-bit app buttons, and the same mouse cursor (sys busy) happened, and when I moved the mouse, ALL the tasks (32 and 64-bit) now suddenly show their CORRECT icons.

What's more, since then, when one of the 64-bit tasks changed it's icon state, it still displayed correctly in the NS taskbar!

So there's definitely something broken in the icon managment area, but it's not as broken as we thought.

Fingers crossed, and if anything changes I'll try the same thing again.

NB: And boy oh boy is it nice to be able to instantly identify the tasks without having to read the title and see what order they're in...

Weird, heh?

One thing: could you send me a backup of your NextSTART configuration to the Winstep support address? I would like to have a look at the task customization changes you've made. Maybe one of them was causing the problem in the first place?