Friday, January 08, 2010

Good old Windows un-named window.

One thing that crops up for Windows XP since adding in the Indexing Option (to get Outlook 07 working fully) is that when doing a search that window has a tendency to freeze up on the view pane. The folder/search pane works fine, but not the main pane.

Now normally when you get a freezing application you simply try to close it, or End Task it. Well for the first instance Windows complains that the window is busy and that shutting it down may cause problems do you want to continue? Say no and it'll just sit there, say yes and it'll just sit there.

So to End Task, up comes Task Manager and the window's not listed because it has no name. So I make sure everything else is closed down and switch to processes and end explorer.exe. Now as Windows runs on Explorer if that executable has to close or restart Windows will automatically run it again. Except in this case.

So with Task Manager still up I run explorer and back comes the desktop clean as a whistle. Of course this messes up your notification area with some processes still running, but not showing. Just run them from the start menu and close them down and restart them if you want them back.

Just such a flaw that you can't close a busy window which has no title.

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