Calling XP geniuses! Can you solve this mystery!?

[Category 5]

I am a computer tech for PC based Professional Audio systems (multitracking DAWs mostly) so I know my way around XP pretty well, but for the life of me I can not solve this problem.

I am having the problem with 2 identical Dell Inspiron 5150 laptops runnoing XP Home, and you should see the silly solutions Dell support are sending me (rediculous). the problem is this.

For professional audio work you absolutely MUST have Show Window Contents While Dragging enabled.

There are two places to enable this. one is under the Display properties Appearance/Effects tab and the other is in the System Control Panel tab under performance options.

On both inspirons, the option is always checked in the system performance panel, but under display properties it is not. I check it, apply it, and all is well - the windows are shown while dragging....

Until I restart or shut down. When the computer reboots, no matter what I have tried (and I have tried every combo of turning them on and off and enabling them in both areas, disabling them, whatever) whenever I restart the check mark is removed from the option under display properties.

It always remains checked under the control panel performance tab, but if it is not checked under display properties all I get while dragging is the outline.

My temporary solution is to enable the function under the display properties every time I start up, but why will the setting not be remembered!?

I searched for a registry key, but the only one I could find looked as though it had the function enabled. Something is flushing the setting (on both brand new inspirons) every restart!


Dell support has been sending me foolish little suggestions like "adjust the screen resolution to match your monitor" "install the latest video drivers" "disable all unnecessary applications at startup for a faster system" "turn off some windows effects to increase system performance". ...but we all know they are rediculous and laughable anyway. So what do I do now?

Thanks to anyone who might be able to help!

Shane

[Rapier]

This isn't a solution but hibernate might keep it.

[Statica]

Are you running any sort of anti-hijack or anti-spyware software fulltime? What it might do is prevent certain registry changes on your system, or might reset it to a previous value.
I would suggest checking to see if you have anything of that nature running and disable it for the time being.

Have you tried editting the registry manually? If you do not know how to edit it please post back here.
1) When you boot up, do not change the folder settings to enable dragging yet.
2) Open up regedit
Change the following keys
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\DragFullWindows
Change the value from 0 to 1
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\Desktop\DragFullWindows change the value to 2

[Metaphorically]

I think Statica is on to something, but it could even be a "feature" that's specific to Dell, so have a look at what kinds of programs they run at startup. Another thing to try is turning off System Restore by right-clicking My Computer then picking Properties (I think this is the right name for the feature, not on an XP machine at the moment).
One question, if you don't mind, I found this statement odd:

For professional audio work you absolutely MUST have Show Window Contents While Dragging enabled.

Why is that?

[Miz]

Poke around in Dell's "user experiece" software. I don't have it on mine so I must have gotten rid of it but I've read several suggestions that it may be the problem.

You might try either running the Doug Knox script, xp_save_settings.vbs (or manually making the registry changes it contains).

[Category 5]

Well, No go yet. I tried to uninstall the Dell Support Agent but it cancelled itself three times. I am logged in as an aministrator so this is very odd behavior to me as well.

The reason "Show Window Contents" must be enabled for pro audio work is that there are usually several items set to always on top so other windows will go behined them. Certain processors have necessary visual information in their interface, as well as redundant information so to save screen real estate you can position windows so that the pertinent visuals are showing while the redundant ones are hidden by the "on top" windows (usually the mixer, performance meter, time clock, and panel selector). With "show window contents" disable it is impossible to maximize efficient screen real estate without dragging and dropping each window several times. This takes up valuable time and at $65 - $100.00 and hour it can add up as a loss!

I may end up just buying another copy of windows and installing it on the laptop. But then I anticipate driver issues....sigh. Keep em coming, and thanks a lot for all the help. This is a responsive forum to say the least!

Shane

[Metaphorically]

Buying Windows when you already own it sounds a bit extreme. How about a workaround? Here's an extra-hokey vbscript that toggles the setting on the Windows 2000 display settings. This is only guaranteed to work five seconds ago on the machine I'm currently using. I can try to tweak it for Windows XP when I'm on that machine later.

set sh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

' Bring up display properties
sh.run "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl"

'WScript.Sleep 1000

sh.AppActivate "Display Properties"

' ctrl-shift-tab twice
sh.SendKeys "^+{TAB}^+{TAB}"

'WScript.Sleep 1000

' alt-w is the accelerator for "Show window contents while dragging"
sh.SendKeys "%w"

'WScript.Sleep 1000

' enter is the same as "Okay" 
sh.SendKeys "{ENTER}"

Copy this and save it in a file called "DisplayHack.vbs". Then you can run the script and see if it works. The ' character means the line is a comment, so you can uncomment the Sleep lines to slow it down and see what happens. I know it's a headache, but it could let you work around the problem until you get a permanent fix.
Good luck.

[Metaphorically]

Here's one that worked on my XP machine 5 seconds ago:

' the lower slowness is, the faster it goes, 
' but it will break if it's too fast :(
Slowness = 1000

set sh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

' Bring up display properties
sh.run "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl"

WScript.Sleep Slowness

sh.AppActivate "Display Properties"

' ctrl-shift-tab twice
sh.SendKeys "^+{TAB}^+{TAB}"

WScript.Sleep Slowness

' alt-e is the accelerator for the "Effects..." button
sh.SendKeys "%e"

WScript.Sleep Slowness

' alt-w is the accelerator for "Show window contents while dragging"
sh.SendKeys "%w"

WScript.Sleep Slowness

' enter is the same as "Okay" for the Effects Dialog
sh.SendKeys "{ENTER}"

WScript.Sleep Slowness

' now press "Okay" on the Display Properties one
sh.SendKeys "{ENTER}"

[Category 5]

Thanks Meta,

How will this work? Will it autoexecute the script every time at startup? I checked the registry, and the effect is enabled by default everywhere except in the display properties/effects area. Too bizarre, but before I execute your script please tell me all in all what exactly the mechanism of its' action is.

Again, I am very thankful for your guys help. This is a great forum. Most forums let requests like this go unanswerd for weeks, despite a couple of bumps.

Shane

[thorlo6]

Category 5, welcome to PCMech. Not all of us know a whole lot about changing registry, etc. But, there is a strong sense of helping, here @ PCMech. I know that this reply from me won't help your problem. I'm more of cheerleader for people like Statica, glc, miz, metaphorically,etc. We do our best to help everyone.thorlo6

[Metaphorically]

The script is just a workaround to act as if you right-clicked the desktop, pressed properties, went to the appearance tab, pressed the effects button, then toggled the show contents setting.

I enjoy vbscript right now, so I'll go through it a piece at a time:

Slowness = 1000

This is just a variable to control how fast the rest of the script runs (instead of typing 1000 over and over, I used the name "Slowness")

set sh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

This creates a WshShell object which lets us use the AppActivate and SendKeys methods later (keep on reading and that'll make sense).

sh.run "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl"

This line does the same as running the display control panel applet. It took a long time to figure out, but should've been obvious. Do a search in your Windows folder and you'll find desk.cpl. If you click on desk.cpl, Windows looks in the registry to figure out what to do with a .cpl file. It finds it under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\cplfile\shell\cplopen\command. The command there is "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL %1,%*" All I did was replace the %1,%* with desk.cpl to get a command that is the same as clicking on the cpl file. Finally, since we know that clicking the cpl file is the same as right clicking the desktop and picking properties, we know this will bring up the Display Properties dialog that we want to see so badly.

WScript.Sleep Slowness

After all that work, wait a second for the dialog to appear.

sh.AppActivate "Display Properties"

AppActivate is effectively "Alt-Tab" to the window that's named.


From here on, the two main commands that the script uses are SendKeys and Sleep. These are used to simulate pressing keys on the keyboard. For example

sh.SendKeys "^+{TAB}^+{TAB}"

WScript.Sleep Slowness

Sends control-shift-tab twice. This switched us to the Appearance tab. If you have extra property-sheet tabs that I don't have (like one for McAfee or ATI), then this part could well put you on the wrong tab. That's what I don't like about this script. The good thing is, it's easy for anybody to adjust the keypresses by changing the SendKeys command. Similarly, you might have to adjust the others if you have different keyboard accelerators than me (for some strange reason).

After reading all this, you can probably see it's not a good script to run automatically, but it would be good to keep on your desktop and click once after booting instead of making the 5 or so clicks you make now.

Once again, it's a workaround, it should save you a couple seconds. On the upside, it doesn't mess with your registry or do anything you can't see directly.

Here are the references at Microsoft for the commands that are used in the script:
The WshShell Object
AppActivate
Sleep
SendKeys
Run Method

[Category 5]

Very cool! ...and thanks.

Any reason not to just put it in the startup folder? Isn't that the same as clicking once windows starts?

I am also going to explore the user rights in the mmc. Mayber there is a setting preventing saving the settings on logout. I know XP Professional has this switch automatically disabled, but I don't know about XP home. I actually deal with Pro 95% of the time so I don't know all of the differences.

Thanks again!
Shane

[Metaphorically]

Enjoy. The only reason I wouldn't put it in startup is that SendKeys can be interrupted by other things happening on the computer. If the script starts, then some other program starts before it's done, the keystrokes can be sent to the wrong app.
MMC is a good place to look, there are all kinds of surprises in there. If you do find a permanent fix, that would be better than what I proposed. Be sure to let us know if you do.