Jeff,
Thank you for your message. I appreciate it.
I understand exactly where you're coming from regarding your product being blamed for other applications' issues. I've been there. Without saying too much, I've dealt with many a complaint of an, uh, acrobatic kind of application breaking things with which it had absolutely no involvement, and even that all the UI eyeball icons in a certain image editing program spying on users. I bet we could swap some stories.
Anyway,... OD+ may NOT be the culprit here. I'm fully aware that my knowledge of how it works is limited, that I am not a programmer, and that my observations of the situation--what I see happened and happening on my system as a user--may not be the full picture. I've seen some very, very weird stuff happen with software in my career.
And, if nothing else, that has taught me to be open to unlikely possibilities when it comes to tech issues. OD+ may be the problem, or it may simply be the last piece that triggered a multi-process conflict.
Here's the sequence of events: I loaded up SDCentral, which prompted me on load to update OD+, WB, and ObjectBar. I did that, letting it run through the installs of each app. In the meantime, I continued to work in Maxthon browser (an IE-engine browser, if you're not familiar with it).
No other app was open (had a UI), but there were a few systray processes going:
ObjectBar (the previous stable dot release)
WindowBlinds (the previous stable dot release)
IP 3.0a
Enhanced Dialog (latest build)
McAfee Firewall
McAfee A/V
Extensis Suitcase 9.02DE
MS OneNote loader
And a few other smaller apps (if you need to know apps and versions, just let me know)
After installation of the updates from SDCentral I rebooted. First, ObjectBar failed to load. OD+ did, however, and pulled up the theme I'd been using--one bar, with a clock, calendar, and weather (I'd had to disable Sysstats-docklets with the previous OD+ release).
I manually launched ObjectBar, which loaded with the new default theme, so I loaded up my theme. That revealed to me that Suitcase, which loads on startup to manage fonts, was not running. When I tried to manually launch it, it failed to initiate though Task Manager's running processes list did reveal that the executable was running. That wasn't just a UI failure, though, as the fonts managed by Suitcase never activated.
Thinking I'd check the forums for technical issues with the ODN updates, I tried to load Maxthon. Again, it wouldn't load though Task Manager showed maxthon.exe as running in the processes. I tried launching it a few more times. With seven instances of maxthon.exe showing as running processes, it still would not come up. The same occured with IE, FireFox, and Ontrack/V-Com PowerDesk 6.
I tried a few more apps. Most of Adobe Creative Suite 2 point products (Illustrator, Pshop, InDesign) loaded without problem. The Adobe Bridge had to be launched twice before it would show--this was consistent, too, it would not actually appear until I had two processes for the app showing in Task Man. FileMaker 7 Dev was the same way, two instances of the process had to be running before I got a UI. ThumbsPlus 7 would not load at all.
MS Outlook 2003 loaded, but clicking on URLs in e-mail messages produced no result; the focus did not even change from the Outlook window.
SDCentral would not run, period. Its process appeared in Task Man then winked out.
When I closed OB+ via the systray, SDCentral would run after the second attempt (two sdcentral processes). With that opened, I unloaded WB and OB, and attempted to do an archive restore from within SDCentral of OB+. It reported that installation had failed, and, I'm sorry, I forget which two components the log said had failed.
I rebooted and was met with the same behaviors with and without OD+ running.
I loaded SDCentral again (again, same routine) and tried to roll back both WB and OB to their pre-update archives. WB reported success, but I THINK OB reported a failure. Reboot, same problems.
Opened SDCentral and uninstalled OD+, rebooted. SDCentral would run, as would Maxthon, IE, FireFox, FileMaker, and Adobe Bridge all on the first process instance. Suitcase would not load, nor would PowerDesk. Outlook would still not communicate with Maxthon or IE.
System restore to 12 hours before update, no change. System restore to two points in the previous day, no change.
Uninstalled all versions of WB, OB, and IP via SDCentral, no change. Ran ODNT_zapper, then uninstalled SDCentral. Manually deleted all Stardock components except C:\Program Files\Common Files\Stardock\mcpcore.dll and mcpstub.dll, which I still cannot delete though I can rename them and their folder.
Rebooted. Suitcase loaded on startup. PowerDesk would not run, but after a reinstall it works again. All other apps seem to be working--except ThumbsPlus 7 despite reinstall (I can live without it for now).
Currently I have no Stardock products installed, and, other than the mcpcore.dll and mcpstub.dll, no pieces of it.
I'm open to troubleshooting, just tell me what you'd like to do. I've got laptops to work from while trouble-shooting.
And, if you'd like to take this discussion off the forum, I'm fine with that too. Tech support sent me a form letter after 48 hours and told me to re-open the ticket if the FAQ doesn't fix the problem, which it didn't. I've been blown off by Stardock tech support before, so I'm not surprised.
WinCustomize Forums
ObjectDock 1.2 has been released. ObjectDock is a freeware program for Microsoft Windows XP/2000 that lets users have a highly customizable dock on their desktop. ObjectDock can respond to mouse-over events with zooming and now in v1.2 with new effects such as gentle rocking and glowing. ObjectDock 1.2 also includes a completely redesigned icon zooming system to provide much smoother looking mouse-over effects.
