Window Detective Activity
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xtal256
Activity for Window Detective
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Burov Dmitry posted a comment on ticket #15
When an app "hangs" in Windows, I often see it's window being replaced with a window owned by DWM. That's when the window goes translucent white. BTW, i traced this specific problem to our own code and its interaction with Delphi VCL library. Should be similar with LCL or any other library of a similar design. Not sure if you're bothered with those minitiuaes.
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but I haven't touched it in over a decade. yeah, i noticed. but it is all about "scratch your itch", so i have no standing to complain with all its flaws this is still a very handful swissknife
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xtal256 posted a comment on ticket #15
There seems to be a taskbar button and/or Glass/Aero frame with stale background and that's it. Ah that might be it. When an app "hangs" in Windows, I often see it's window being replaced with a window owned by DWM. That's when the window goes translucent white. By the way, I apologise for any crashes in WD. I did work on improving it's stability while it was in active development, but I haven't touched it in over a decade. At this stage I'm just glad some people are still getting use out of it!
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You can just try to download that specific build of pmm and try. PMM's dev was changing their windows handling in later builds, u think. I did it on Windows 7, not sure if it is OS-related or not. Just posted it as a perfectly reproducible and publicly available example of a behavior i often saw otherwise in house. As for auto-detection, yes, it tries, but for example it does not detect when the process goes out and still shows it and few windows it did not explicitly destroy. Also, this auto-detection...
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Refreshing did not help then. I suspect there was something amiss between GDI and DWM. There seems to be a taskbar button and/or Glass/Aero frame with stale background and that's it. Other times i managed to find 0x0 window created for taskbar button, and to force it visible, but not that time. Frankly, i saw a number of times WD just crashing, trying to interact with problematic windows. Being C++ app it seems to lack app-global handler for uncaught exceptions and just dies... So i try to be cautious....
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Have you tried refreshing the Window Detective tree (Green button in the toolbar, or menu View > Refresh)? Whilst Window Detective can track the creation and destruction of windows and automatically update the tree, it does not always see new windows. If you started up Window Detective after PMM and still can't see it's window, then I'm afraid I cannot offer any help. WD just uses the EnumChildWindows function to get all child windows of the desktop. I don't know if it's possible for PMM to show...
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Some GDI windows are not seen
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ddk1 posted a comment on ticket #12
Just got exact same thing. If I have a normal Excel .xlsx file open and I start WD, all is fine. Then in Excel I try to open the VBIDE and Excel crashes. Alternatively, if I have a workbook with macros (.xlsm) open (VBIDE not open) and I start WD, Excel crashes. WD 3.5.1, Excel 365 desktop.
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The last time I build it would have been with VS 2010, so there's probably a lot that has changed. But from the look of that screenshot, "CL.exe" (the compiler/linker) cannot be found. So perhaps something is wrong with the installation or paths. Try googling the error.
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ROGERIO NERI created ticket #7
visual studio 2019 compile error
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Andrey Lyashchuk modified a comment on ticket #12
hi, xtal256 1.Neither Window Detective nor any of the MS Office applications was launched 2. First, run the Window Detective application 3. Then run Excel in safe mode and create an empty workbook. 4. Re-index windows in Window Detective by executing the "Refresh All Window" command or by pressing F5 5. Everything works as expected 6. Opening VBIDE in running Excel (it does not matter if the VBE window was closed after that) 7. Re-index windows in Window Detective by executing the "Refresh All Window"...
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Neither Window Detective nor any of the MS Office applications was launched First, run the Window Detective application; Then run Excel in safe mode and create an empty workbook. Re-index windows in Window Detective by executing the "Refresh All Window" command or by pressing F5 Everything works as expected Opening VBIDE in running Excel (it does not matter if the VBE window was closed after that) Re-index windows in Window Detective by executing the "Refresh All Window" command or by pressing F5...
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Thanks for using Window Detective. I have not worked on it in a long time, but I will consider your request if I ever pick it back up again. For the moment, you can see the number of immediate children (i.e. not including children of children) if you hover your mouse over a window in the list. Not sure how helpful that would be to you.
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Brendan MacLean created ticket #3
Some way to get a window count
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I've planned to do it for a while now, but I never got around to it. Been too busy with other stuff.
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Charlie Hayes posted a comment on ticket #14
Ah, that explains it! Any plans for 64bit support? Thoughts on a warning message when you try to invoke it on an unsupported app?
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I suspect you are trying to monitor messages of a 64-bit application. Due to Window Detective being 32-bit, it can only monitor 32-bit applications. When viewing properties of a window in a 64-bit application, you might see an "access denied" warning message. However, nothing is logged if you attempt to monitor messages of those windows. In hindsight, I can see this would cause some confusion. If you are unsure, you can check if an application is 32 or 64 bit by using something like Process Hacker....
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Can't monitor window messages
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Ah, I have been able to reproduce now. I was previously trying on Windows 7, but when I used Win 10 like you have, I was able to see it crash pretty quickly. I only have my development tools on a Win 7 machine, so it will make debugging difficult. But I'll try to investigate some time soon.
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Miroslav Policki posted a comment on ticket #13
Perhaps your CPU is faster than mine, so maybe you could trigger this bug more easily by running something CPU-heavy at the same time?
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Yes, I suspected that might have been the case. I've definitely encountered bugs like this before, but they are difficult to debug because they are so rare/intermittent.
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I've done some further testing and I think the trick is to generate so many messages that the application starts getting unresponsive. I've had a few tries where there weren't many messages captured, and WD didn't crash then.
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Yes, pretty consistently. I just restarted my computer and tried it twice (with Thunderbird), WD crashed both times.
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Thanks for the detailed information and stack trace. I tried for a bit in Thunderbird but could not reproduce. Were you able to reproduce consistently, or was it intermittent?
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Crash when stopping message capturing
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Try uninstalling and then installing again. The installer should create the registry keys, then WD will use them. If the parent key does not exist when WD starts up, then it will not create it and not save any settings. I can't quite remember why I did this (so perhaps it's not a good idea), but it might have been to allow portable installs that don't touch the registry. I think I was going to make it use an ini file instead, but never got around to it.
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Try uninstalling and then installing again. The installer should create the registry keys, then WD will use them. If they keys do not exist when WD starts up, then it will not create them and not save any settings. I can't quite remember why I did this (so perhaps it's not a good idea), but it might have been to allow portable installs that don't touch the registry. I think I was going to make it use an ini file instead, but never got around to it.
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Thomas posted a comment on ticket #2
Just a remark: I do not have the mentioned Registry Key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Window Detective\Window Detective\smartSettings even not its parent: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Window Detective Normally a Registry key should be re-created by the responsible program if it is not existing. Moving/resizing the window does not help. It is not re-created and not remembered. So the issue is still open.
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Let WD remember last window size and position on screen
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I cannot reproduce. I assume this is what you are referring to: Are you on the latest version of WD (3.5.1)? Does Office crash immediately after you open the VB editor, or shortly after? Does it happen every time? Can you please get the crash dump and attach it here or email it to me. If it's too big we'll have to find a hosting service to upload it to.
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I cannot reproduce. I assume this is what you are referring to: Are you on the latest version of WD (3.5.1)? It would be useful if I could get the crash dump, but I will continue to try and reproduce.
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I cannot reproduce. I assume this is what you are referring to: Are you on the latest version of WD (3.4.0)? It would be useful if I could get the crash dump, but I will continue to try and reproduce.
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I cannot reproduce. I assume this is what you are referring to: It would be useful if I could get the crash dump, but I will continue to try and reproduce.
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Jurgen created ticket #12
Crash on opening Office VBEditor
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Thanks for raising. I will need to do some work to ensure that Window Detective correctly handles different DPI / scale.
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Flashing a window on Multi monitor with different DPI
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Window Detective released /release-3.5.1/Window-Detective-3.5.1-src.zip
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Crash when capturing messages
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Cool. I will release a new version with the fix shortly. You should revert the changes you made to the data_types.xml file now, the new version will be different.
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That seems to have solved the problem. I was unable to reproduce the crash after applying your fix.
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Ok, I think I know what's going on. I changed one of the names in data_types.xml ("uint" became "uint32") but I forgot to change it in the code. So it was trying to use a type that didn't exist. I will fix this soon, but can I get you to do something to validate the fix? Go to where Window Detective is installed (i.e. "Program Files") and open the data_types.xml file under the data directory. In it, near the top, you will see a bunch of lines that say "primitive". Look for the one that has name="uint32",...
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Ok, I think I know what's going on. I changed one of the names in data_types.xml ("uint" became "uint32") but I forgot to change it in the code. So it was trying to use a type that didn't exist. I will fix this soon, but can I get you to do something to validate the fix? Go to where Window Detective is installed (i.e. "Program Files") and open the data_types.xml file under the data directory. In it, near the top, you will see a bunch of lines that say "primitive". Look for the one that has name="uint32",...
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Ok, I think I know what's going on. I changed one of the names in data_types.xml ("uint" became "uint32") but I forgot to change it in the code. So it was trying to use a type that didn't exist. I will fix this soon, but can I get you to do something to validate the fix? If you go to where Window Detective is installed (i.e. "Program Files") and open the data_types.xml file under the data directory. In it, near the top, you will see a bunch of lines that say "primitive". Look for the one that has...
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No, I can make a debug build myself. I just need to get the right debug dlls of Qt otherwise it won't run.
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Would you find it helpful if I ran a debug build and sent a stack trace or a crash dump?
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Remote debugging didn't turn up anything useful, and my development machine is Win 7, so I can't use that. Going to be difficult to determine the cause :(
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I have been able to reproduce the crash fairly consistently on Windows 10, and am now trying to debug.
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The window being captured doesn't get destroyed as far as I've noticed. It happens every time, I can reproduce the bug reliably. Oh and I forgot to mention, my system is Windows 10 64-bit.
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I suspect this is because Window Detective tries to access data from a window that has been destroyed. Does it happen to you often?
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Crash when capturing messages
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The default language is not Greek, it's English. Perhaps you accidentally selected Greek when installing. If you think it's a bug then I will investigate, otherwise I'll close this issue.
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Ok, after deletion of all .qmf files it works now. However it is strange that the default language is greek. It should be english even if the user does not select anything.... No, I downloaded it from sourceforge
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Pk, after deletion it works now. Everything works now. However it is strange taht the default language is greek. It should be english even if the user does not select anaything.... No I downloaded it from sourceforge
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Window Detective does currently have this feature. It will remember the size and position of most, if not all, of it's own windows. It writes the settings to the Windows registry, perhaps the application cannot write to it for some reason. Run regedit.exe and look for the entry "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Window Detective\Window Detective\smartSettings". If that is not there, then your settings have not been remembered. Additionally, Window Detective uses a feature I call "smart settings", which...
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It seems you have the Greek language in use. Window Detective does not use the language set in the operating system (although that would be a good idea), it loads a language file from it's own installation directory. Look for a file with the .qm extension. You should find one called "el_GR.qm". Delete that file, and any other .qm files, and Window Detective should run using English. Did you download it from this site (SourceForge), or another site that offers "portable" applications? If the later,...
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Brad BizX modified ticket #9
Wrong menu language of WD
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Wrong menu language of WD
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Let WD remember last window size and position on screen
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Unable to save window messages
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