Zugg Software :: View topic - [2.12 Pro] Unsaved window sizes revisited

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 3:04 am

I had this Issue in regular CMUD 2.12 so i decided to go for a clean install and upgrade to pro too see if I could finally get this to go away.

After uninstalling, i used CCleaner to completely wipe the CMUD folder from my system, in hopes that no residual effects would remain when I installed Pro.

Finally, I installed Pro, and found my game and loaded it up.

I did save my package and map files from CMUD, but as of yet have not used them, since i want to look at this clean.

Now then, that said, onto the issue:

Whenever I open my settings editor The window is just to small to see what I am doing, despite constant resizing, it never remembers the size I had it at the next time i open it up. This is the size it starts for me:

I dont even get to see all the buttons along the top, and little more then the tree view down below.

A few other windows are especially irritating to me in this reguard as well:

Sessions Window:

I used the All Muds tab to emphasize the issue here.
As you can see the options on the left panel are partially hidden, scrolling required if i want to see them all without resizing.
Also the description of the MUD in question is impossible to read without resizing.

Prefs:

Not all the options on the left are visable.
All the buttons at the bottom are piled up.

Room properties (exits tab for emphasis):

I dont even get too see the list of exits in the room here, nor the various other options for the selected exit.

Nothing that stops the program from running, but it is a MAJOR annoyance having to resize the windows each time i need to use them for something.

Any clue on how to resolve this issue?

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 3:40 am

All of those windows save their size/location to your CMUD.INI file. So, it sounds like something is preventing CMUD from writing to this file. Can you check your file permissions and check the modify date of the CMUD.INI file to see if it is changing. If you open the CMUD.INI file in NotePad, you should be able to easily see where the size and position of each window are saved.

Also, these values are only saved when CMUD exits, so is CMUD exiting properly? And how are you closing CMUD?

But all of this is working fine for me here.

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 5:48 am

Well.. it turns out i had two copies of cmud.ini, one in My Documents and on in the cmudpro folder.
So i delete the cmud folder from My Documents since i save my settings in the cmudpro folder and restarted cmud... the issue persisted.

I open up cmud.ini and tried to manually reset the width and height options (while cmud was closed), saved, closed then reopened to see if my changed stayed, they had.

After reopening CMUD Pro, at first the char selection window stayed the new bigger size.
Then as soon as i opened the individual mud (or hit escape to open a blank session), all the window sizes reverted.
Hitting the Sessions button showed the smaller size window again.

Reopening cmud.ini the settings had reverted to the previous values.

So I try resetting the width and height values while CMUD is running, save and close.
Reopen to check that new values save, and the did.
Hit the appropriate button in CMUD, and its a small window again.

I check cmud.ini and the values had reverted again.

Something is resetting the values in cmud.ini at other then closing.

As for how i close CMUD, its either by 'X'ing out the program, or typing in 'q' at the popup reconnect window after quiting out of the mud.

I have even tried closing out CMUD with the windows open to the size i want, hoping that will force them to save, but no luck.

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 5:12 pm

What Theme is your CMUD set to?

Is anyone else having trouble with this? I still cannot reproduce any problem with this.

I did verify that CMUD does save the INI file whenever a window closes (to save it's size/position). But all of my windows seem to be saving their proper sizes.

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:03 pm

I have verified that CMUD.ini is saving whenever the Settings, Prefs, ect buttons get clicked on as wel

Is there some table that is set when CMUD opens that holds the window size values?
And if so is there some way to access this and modify it while CMUD is running?
Maybe you can add another option to save window size when you right click on the wndow's title bar?

Seeing as I am dealing with a totally clean install, I don't see how this could be a held-over issue from constant updates. Im not even using the same type of CMUD anymore since I went to Pro.

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 8:00 pm

Hmm, that's interesting information. The INI file *shouldn't* be written to when the Settings are opened...only when they are closed. So that might give me a clue as to what is happening.

Did this just start happening in the 2.12 version, or did it happen in older versions too? It might be a side effect of the theme changes that I made.

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:00 am

I have been dealing with it since v2.06 at least. Here is the post i made for it then:

http://forums.zuggsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28520&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

But it has compounded, it didn't used to effect my settings editor windows and such until v2.10 or so...
That is why i tried a clean install and moving up to Pro, but even that didn't fix it

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:57 am

Well, your above post was about some of the other windows (room properties, color picker) and they still don't remember there locations. I'm mainly concerned about the Session window and Settings Editor, and it sounds like that's a new problem.

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 1:05 am

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 3:14 am

Its set to the 'Office XP' Theme, i hadnt touched it before, though i tried changing it and the issue persisted.

You would think that my changing the cmud.ini file while cmud was closed would fix it, no?

It ALMOST does.. The initial sessions window that pops up before the blank setings uses the size i put in.
But as soon as i open a session, or escape to the blank one, reopening it by clicking on the sessions button, it reverts to the smaller size again.

Is there another file that might have the info saved it in?
Does the version cached in memory somehow remain in memory even when CMUD is closed only to be reused when CMUD is opened again?

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:00 am

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:11 am

Normal size (96 DPI)
1280 by 1024
Two monitors [1] [2] extended into the second.

No desktop enhancement that i know of.
Though I am running the 'ATI Catalyst Control Center' that came with my video card to manage to monitors.

No matter how many times i open, move and resize the Sessions window, after Xing it out and reopening it has reverted to:

[Char]
SortCol=3
SortDir=1
Style=0
EditPage=0
IsMaxed=0
IsMin=0
Top=135
Left=240
Width=521
Height=300
OnTop=1
Rollup=0
Scale2=14
NoteHeight=39
Taskbar=1
Alpha=0

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 5:32 am

This one is driving me absolutely crazy! PLEASE SOMEONE ELSE TEST THIS!

I also use an ATI graphics card. Your DPI setting is fine. Your resolution is fine. We are both using XP Home. And I also use two monitors. But here is my INI section:

[Char]
SortCol=3
SortDir=1
Style=0
EditPage=0
IsMaxed=0
Top=307
Left=93
Width=737
Height=470
OnTop=1
Rollup=0
Scale2=14
Taskbar=1
Alpha=0
NoteHeight=39
IsMin=0

same as yours except mine is saving the Top, Left, Width, and Height properly. I have no idea what could possibly be wrong. I'm completely stumped on this. I mean, this is really silly...saving the window location is a trivial thing to do. Saving an INI file is also trivial. I've been doing this for years. In fact, the method used in CMUD is virtually identical to the method used in zMUD. I've got 5 computers to test it on, both XP and Vista, and none of them have any problem with this at all.

It has to be something on your system, but I've run out of things to check. And I can't imagine what other software could possibly interfere with this kind of simple stuff.

Edited: OK, wait, you *DO* have some sort of window enhancement software running. Look at your very first screen shot: To the left of the min/max/close icons you have another "mystery" icon. CMUD didn't put that icon there. Some other software on your computer is adding that icon. You need to look at all of the processes running on your system and everything in your startup (run MSCONFIG from the Run menu to look at your startup processes). But I'll bet that whatever is adding that icon is also screwing with the window sizes.

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 5:47 am

That mystery Icon is but there by the ATI softwhere... All it does is maximize the program across both monitors instead of just one.

And here are my processes:

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 7:04 am

I did some testing with this. I didn't have any problems at all and I'm running WinXP Pro on a laptop.

The only time CMUD didn't resize the way I closed it is if it was position so that more 90% of was 'off-screen'. CMUD would then open 'on-screen' at the size that I closed it. This is behavior I would want and expect.

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5187

The Logitech LCD Monitor and the ATI Hydravision are both display modifying controls. The other 2 Logitechs LVCOMS and LGDCore might also be, but I can't be sure. Start by disabling 1 of the first 2 and see if that corrects the problem. Whether it does or doesn't swap with is enabled and which is disabled. Then check again.

If it works both ways then the 2 programs are interfering with each other, if it only works when a specific one is disabled then we know that is the problem program. If there was no improvement disable both and try again. If it still doesn't work then move on to the second group I mentioned. After you find the one that corrects the problem you will have to check and see what other affects having it disabled causes.

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:50 pm

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 5:30 pm

The Logitech LCD Monitor is for handling the LCD screen on the G15 keyboard (I have one too), so that's not causing the problem.

My guess is that the ATI stuff is doing something bad. Honestly, I really hate all of the stuff that ATI adds to the system (and I'll be switching to an NVidia card the next time I upgrade this). I hate that their control panel that requires .NET (although it has certainly improved over the original bloatware that it used to have).

Anyway, definitely try turning off the HydraVision stuff, or whatever is adding that icon to your window. Then reboot and see if it helps. In the old days, you needed to use specific video drivers for multimonitor stuff, but these days, Windows XP actually does a fine job of handling multiple monitors and it does so in a much more standard way. So I'd turn off anything fancy that ATI is doing and let Windows XP manage itself. I personally would hate to maximize an application across both monitors, but everyone has different preferences I guess.

But at least turning off the ATI stuff would help us track down whatever is messing with CMUD.

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:06 pm

Yup, turning off the hydravision fixed it.

But what gets me is that having it on didn't affect this until v2.06 and later, and got worse bit by bit,

You would think it would go wonky from the get go, not deteriorate over months.

Anyway, I'm glad i got regular size windows again, and the extra icon is gone too.

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5187

Also for anyone using any ATI hardware I would reccommend the Omega Drivers. As I understand it they are produced and maintained by an employee of ATI. They are not officially supported by ATI, but I have seen links to them provided by the moderators of ATI's support forums. I guess that makes them unofficially supported.

My experience with them is quite good, and from all appearances they are the same driver files as the official ATI releases. They adjust the settings used by those drivers to better fit your system and provide a quick and clean interface to allow you to further adjust them away from the defaults.

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:58 pm

Shalimar, were you using the latest version of your drivers and of Hydravision?

I have no idea why it would be getting worse. If anything, 2.12 should have been better because CMUD no longer installs it's own Theme Engine that might interfere with Windows. Before 2.12 you probably wouldn't even see the Hydravision icon on the window caption because the CMUD theme engine was overriding it all.

Or, maybe ATI has some sort of evil auto-updater running and it has been installing "fixes" that have made Hydravision worse? Or, if you have automatic Windows Updates turned on, maybe a recent Windows update is conflicting with Hydravision.

This kind of stuff is exactly why I can really only officially support Windows "out of the box". But I've personally had so much trouble with ATI software in the past (both drivers and control panel...never actually used Hydravision myself) that I don't have much confidence in the quality of their software.

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:25 pm

As far as i know, hydravision was out of the box, it came with the disk for the card. Though it could have been self updating.

It was also the tool that gave the 'Move to monitor x' functionality i had mentioned in past threads.

But I have had those Icon's on my CMUD windows, since i installed it on my machine, and all was fine until recently.

Either way, thanks for your help in getting this resolved, even if it was only happening for me. Your willingness to put this much time into helping a single customer is... well its real big of ya!

Three cheers for Zugg!

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 10:57 pm