Open dialog doesn't appear

[jimmygyuma]

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.

[HITMAN-X-]

Real question is what has change or been added ?

You say you had this problem before and fix it by a reinstall (Started over) and now you got it again. Programs just don't get problems like this 2 times in a row for no reason. So what have you added to Paint.NEt or your computer ?, Do you do virus checks, spyware checks, desk clean ups, defragments, and closing processes in task manager that are not needed.

Have you tryed uninstalling .NET Frameworks and reinstalling it or repairing it to see if it the .NET Frameworks it self.

[Rick Brewster]

No doubt you have a shell extension of some kind that is causing this to happen. That's been the case for every single problem that's been reported with the Open or Save dialogs.

[jimmygyuma]

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

[david.atwell]

Shell extensions don't have anything to do with PdN specifically. They're an add-on to windows itself. See here.

[jimmygyuma]

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.

[jimmygyuma]

Re Hitman:

Yes, yes, yes, yes...

What's changed is that Paint.NET updated itself. I never had this problem before then.

[david.atwell]

It sounds like the open window dialog has been somehow moved...but I don't know anything other than that. Does Windows>Reset Window Locations help? (It may not work, but it's worth a shot)

[jimmygyuma]

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.

[Rick Brewster]

Can you post a screenshot? (as much as you may think it won't help, there's the possibility that it might)

[jimmygyuma]

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

[jimmygyuma]

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.

[Bob]

No doubt you have a shell extension of some kind that is causing this to happen.

My screen capture program

Uninstall it and say what happen.

[Rick Brewster]

What if you press Windows Key + D, and then Shift + Windows Key + D ? (this will force all the windows to hide, and then force them all back)

If that works then it's just a painting issue which is easily fixed on my end (in the next update that is).

[jimmygyuma]

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.

[jwexqm]

I've been hitting this for months now. I got so wound up today I downloaded the following to find out what was going on.

ShellExView from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/index.html

and

filemon from http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysint ... lemon.mspx

I'd say run up ShellExView and look for any shell extensions that have UNC pathnames attributed to them (beginning with '\\') - they will be candidates for creating hang-ups if the network resource isn't available.

Next, invoke the file-open or file-save-as dialog from Paint.net but with filemon running to get the familiar hang-up to happen. Note, you'll want to filter captured disk events on the 'PaintDotNet.exe' process, otherwise you'll be swamped in disk activity from other processes. Look for any network links being followed. In the end I found that having the dialogs in 'icon' mode meant that the control was following links into sub-directories off the desktop as it generates preview picons on the folder icon. Eventually I found a load of network shortcuts that were responsible.

Hope that helps.

James

[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