jimmygyuma

Thanks for your efforts maybe it will help someone else if they run into the problem. As for me, I just switched to Firefox and no more problem. Somehow or other it was IE running that screwed things up. Jim

Truly sorry barkbark. Uncle.

Whatsa matter barkbark, having a bad day? What ambiguities? I described exactly what I was 'wishing for.' Okay, you can use Borders N' Shapes to get the job done, but you have to go around the Horn to do it. One of the things I like best about Paint.NET is ease of use. Creating a new image the right size, drawing the border you want around that, selecting all of it, copying it to the clipboard, switching to the image, pasting it, moving it into place...is not ease of use. The designers of Paint.NET have used two completely different ways of doing things with Text and Shapes. Consistency is a good thing. With Text, while you're drawing you can change any of the parameters, including position. With shapes you have to set everything before hand because once you've drawn it, you're done. What I was 'wishing for,' was doing Shapes the same way. When you drag your shape and lift the mouse, you're not done; options appear on the toolbar to change the x, y, width, height, line thickness, color, etc., and a nub at the bottom right corner to move it around with the mouse. Have a nice day.

Okay, that's nice, but it doesn't answer a single one of my requests.

Okay, will try the keys. I thought I was kidding about IE, but just now I had IE opened but minimized, pdn froze, I shut down IE and the dialog immediately appeared. I tried Open a few times, no problem, I opened IE, tried Open and it froze, closed IE and it appeared. Later...tried the keys, didn't work.

One last thing. When I posted the last comment I had left pdn in it's hung up state. When I logged out and shut down IE, there was pdn, with the Open dialog waiting for me! So now I have another solution besides the Esc key. Fire up IE, go to the pdn forum, log in, log out, shut down IE, and voila, I'm in business.

Re: screenshot Tried, no luck. When it's hung up PrtSc grabs something that looks like the result of an edge-detect routine, all black with edges in white. My screen capture program will not capture the full screen when pdn is hung up; capturing the pdn window produces a blank white image; capturing the active window produces nothing, because the active window is the open file dialog, which isn't on the screen. I tried everything I could think of but got nothing usable. While I was doing all this, I can explain some things that I saw. While pdn is hung up: The Color dialog, which I keep in the lower left, half off the window; when I clicked 'start' half the start menu was behind pdn, but the part of the Color dialog that was off the pdn window was hidden by the start menu. All of 'all programs' was behind pdn. The blue rectangles on the toolbars that I mentioned yesterday didn't appear today. Thanks, everyone, for your help, but I can't spend any more time on this. As long as it will work in maximized mode I can live with it. I'm way behind on everything else. Jim

Well, when it happens, I can't do anything with the main window. But next time, I'll try Esc, Reset Window Locations, and try Open and see if it has any effect. I noticed when it happened yesterday, that a couple pieces of the title bar of, I guess the dialog, were drawn on top of the toolbars, just a couple of small blue rectangles. As long as I keep the window maximized, it works fine.

Re Hitman: Yes, yes, yes, yes... What's changed is that Paint.NET updated itself. I never had this problem before then.

Well, I have Windows XP Media Center Edition v 2002 SP2, and I haven't added anything to it. I just would never install anything if it said it did anything to the OS, enhance, speed up, add features, anything. I have learned that the best way for me to keep it running smoothly is to leave it strictly alone. I have a lot of programs on my machine, but so far as I know, the only ones running on NET are pdn, stuff from Microsoft, and three programs I've written myself. Again, today, I noticed that maximizing the window (pdn) fixed the problem. I'm working on a website and I keep a lot of programs open. Usually I have pdn maximized, but sometimes I have to size it down to make room for something I need to refer to as I'm using it and when I'm done, minimize it without maximizing first. Then, later, when I need it again, and activate it, and click Open--no Open dialog. But if I click Esc, to cancel the Open, maximize the window, then click Open, it works. That's not a very good explanation, but I can't remember what it's called when you click the middle button at the top with two overlapping squares.

I don't even know what a 'shell extension' is. All I have is Paint.net exactly as I downloaded it.

Exactly one week ago today I reported a problem with the Save As dialog not appearing. A reinstall was suggested, which I did and it fixed the problem. Temporarily, it seems. Today, it's the Open dialog. Click on Open, the Open dialog does not appear and the program freezes, not just because it's a modal dialog, it moves itself to the top of the z-order and not even Task Manager will appear. Can't open a file, or do anything else either. Hitting the escape key clears everything up, until I hit open again. So I guess I have to reinstall it again. But, really, I've got better things to do than reinstall this program every week. Later... Reinstalling didn't fix it. Now what? Later still... I meant to hit the close button and hit the maximize button by mistake; just for kicks I tried Open one more time, and it worked.

Oh, how I wish when you drew a shape, there was a nub so you could move it around instead of having to start over. And for really pie in the sky, being able to draw precisely would be a boon, i.e., a dialog where you set the parameters exactly, i.e., start x, start y, width, & height for a rectangle.

Well...it's not a bug if a reinstall fixed it, is it? It's been so long since I had to reinstall anything it didn't even occur to me, but that fixed it. Thanks.

Paint.NET recently updated itself - v3.10 (Final Release build 3.10.2791.35943) - and I didn't pay much attention because I was involved building a web site. Well, today I needed it to help with the site and Save As.. doesn't work! Click on Save As and the file menu is only partially redrawn, that is about 3/4 of it is still there, and nothing else happens. I go to Task Manager to shut it down and it tells me it is waiting for a response from me, so I go back and click Esc and I'm back in business but I haven't saved the file. What's happening is the Save Dialog isn't appearing. Happens every time. Open works, whoopee, but without the Save dialog it's useless. Any help, anybody?