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Windows Taskbar Problem

vewyphishy

The Original Smoking Fish
Joined
Sep 10, 2003
Messages
2,739
I've had this problem for a while. It's actually a really strange issue.

As you know, Windows has a taskbar at the bottom of the screen (or whatever side of the screen you have it at). When you open multiple windows and programs, each one gets its own "tab." Whenever you click on the tab you want, the window automatically comes to the forefront.

Well... that's how its SUPPOSED to work.

What mine has been doing is this. Whenever you have an active window open, if you try to click another tab in the Taskbar, instead of bringing that window up the forefront as it is supposed to, the tab just blinks (indicating that it's now running in the background.

I then click the tab AGAIN and you can see the window minimize. I click the tab a THIRD time... and this time, it gets brought to the front.

Continuing with this act of futility, if I now click the tab for the previous window (which is now behind the new window), it does NOT come to the forefront and like before, the tab blinks. Click the tab again and it minimizes. Click it a third time, and it comes to the forefront.

One more bit of info... all of these windows are just basic Mozilla or IE windows. Maybe AIM. Or Windows Explorer. That's it. No fancy programs.

What the hell is going on? Why is it not bringing up the right window when I click on the tab?

If a screenshot will help, let me know. I'll get one created and posted up.

Thanks!
 
emodx said:
Which OS?
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XP.

Hmm, virtual memory? Let me check that out. Any good suggestions on how to deal with that piece of it?
 
Reboot, then check for spyware and any parisitic software (AOL, Yahoo Toolbar, and other things that try to install themselves with other software).
 
IgwanaRob said:
Reboot, then check for spyware and any parisitic software (AOL, Yahoo Toolbar, and other things that try to install themselves with other software).
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That's all clean.

Now in terms of virtual memory, I have 768mg of RAM. What should the virtual min and max be set at? Or should I have "No paging file"?
 
If you have that much ram, VM should not be an issue unless you are running some serious resource hogs.
 
godfather said:
godfather said:
What happens when you reboot your computer? Does the problem still occur?
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Wanna answer my question too buddy? :whistling:
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Easy there. Nothing's changed. Reboot is the first thing I did.
 
Sounds like Explorer isn't loading correctly. What happens when you do the following?

Press Ctrl+Shift+Escape, find the explorer.exe process and end it. Then in the same window, hit the Run command and type in explorer.exe and click OK, that'll restart the explorer process.
 
AVB - before I had a chance to try your solution, I set the system to have no page file. Then rebooted. Then deleted the actual page file. Rebooted again.

Working fine now.

I'll keep your solution in mind should this crap happen again. I'm still not sure what caused it but I do know that it's "fixed."

Thanks everyone. :thumbs:
 
AVB, do you normally reccomend running with out a page file, or just to do this, then reset back to paging? I have never hears running a Windoze OS w/o a paging file.
 
Set your system to do a full CHKDSK and defrag at boot time, and have it defrag. You should try doing this fairly regularly - and have ot defrag the page file too.
 
emodx said:
AVB, do you normally reccomend running with out a page file, or just to do this, then reset back to paging? I have never hears running a Windoze OS w/o a paging file.
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Some guys will tell you that if you have 1GB or more of RAM you'll get better overall performance without a page file than with one. Most of the Windows driver guys I work with tell me that the page file system is so ingraned into Windows you're probably better with one than without. One good way to optimize the page file is to set it to a fixed size, rather than let Windows manage it. There are lots of good resources you can Google up that discuss the different opinions on fixed page file sizes.

FWIW - B.B.S.
 
BkCloud114 said:
grand cru no 2 said:
XP will do that sometimes when the virtual memory is low.
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Because it sucks.... LOL
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The most useful post so far. :whistling:

:sign:
 
You should always use a page file IMO.

emodx said:
AVB, do you normally reccomend running with out a page file, or just to do this, then reset back to paging? I have never hears running a Windoze OS w/o a paging file.
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