How do I make WebDev clean up its tooltray "tracks"? - visual-studio

After I've shut down a VS 2008 web project, well, a lot of times, I see many instances of the WebDev icon in the "tooltray" / system notification area:
These are no longer active instances; they were shut down by VS.
When I mouse over any of these, Windows Vista "conveniently" collapses the tray for me. This makes life miserable if the app I want is in between any of them (e.g., Outlook in the image above), and even worse if I actually want to right click on the "active" WebDev.
Any idea how I can get VS, WebDev, or Windows to fix this behavior?

There is a utility on CodeProject that does this: TrayIconBuster
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/TrayIconBuster.aspx
It runs every x minutes and removes all phantom icons...
Not the perfect solution, because I think this should be built in to Windows...

Related

Why did my Microsoft Add-in suddenly stop showing as an option in F12 devtools?

At one point I was able to see our Outlook add-in app in the target options in f12 devtools for troubleshooting, but sometime last month it stopped showing up there. My colleagues are stumped, and I can't find much online in the way of troubleshooting.
I tried checking my Windows version and Outlook version against others who can see it in their devtools, but we're all on Windows 10 enterprise v1803, Outlook v1910, and IE 11. I've tried many things over the month since this happened like rebooting my PC, making sure I have the latest updates from IT, refreshing the options, running some commands I found online for targeting the right browser for devtools, etc. No change.
Another peculiar thing is that I'm seeing some completely different things in the Add-in than they are, like button alignments and div widths and such. I had our dev environment looking perfect on my end, but when a few people on the team screenshared with me there were a number of styling issues I can't reproduce. Even weirder, nobody experiences these issues in O365, it's just the desktop Outlook app on our Windows machines.
Any ideas on how to troubleshoot this would be very greatly appreciated.
Steps I take to produce the issue:
Click on manifest icon for our app in Outlook ribbon. App loads in the sidebar.
Open F12 devtools (both 32 and 64 bit for good measure from the System32 and SysWOW64 directories).
App is not in the target list. Click refresh, still not in the list.
FYI, any IE 11 windows I have open show up there, just not my app.
Starting in Windows 10 version 1903, the latest version of Office will use Edge WebView instead of IE to render add-ins. Edge WebView requires a different debugger (not the F12 debugger) called Microsoft Edge DevTools. You can find out more about it here.

Issue with resizing windows using an Application Compatibility shim

I'm trying to run a legacy VB6 application on Windows 10. I'm using creating an .sdb shim file which detects the application's .exe using the Compatibility Administrator tool found in the Windows ADK. Whenever the .exe runs, the screen resolution is resized to a specific resolution. When the .exe stops, the resolution returns to normal.
The Compatibility fixes I'm using are "ForceDisplayMode" with parameters to display at the legacy app's old resolution. And also "ForceTemporaryModeChange" which will revert the screen resolution back to normal.
One problem I'm having is that when the application is open, if I close my laptop lid and reopen it, the .sdb stops working (windows doesn't log out). If I log out, the old resolution is maintained as expected. I'm trying to figure out if there's an option to maintain the .sdb's resolution, or if this is an oversight on Microsoft's end?
Ok, in the off chance that anyone has this incredibly obscure problem in the future, the solution was apparently to disable tablet mode on Windows 10 1809. That solves the .sdb shim being undone by closing the lid on my SP3/SP6s.
Edit: Ok, turns out that was not the solution. It was just coincidence, so I've uncheckmarked this answer. We had an image that didn't have this problem but then later images reverted this behavior. Still don't know why this occurs.
Edit 2: I still don't know why this occurs but I have a few observations that may help someone. I'm on Windows 10 LTSC Version 1809 Build 17763.615. It seems to have to do with specifically putting the SP6 to sleep via flipping up the keyboard. If you sleep by Windows > Power > Sleep or pressing the power button or letting the SP6 go to sleep on its own, the SDB is correctly maintained. Another odd observation is that if you sleep via the 3 ways listed above but then flip up the keyboard, the SDB is cancelled.

blank window when installing visual studio on windows 10

I have a Windows 10 64-bit PC (fresh install, not an upgrade).
When I run the setup file (web or offline alike) in order to install Visual Studio (2013 or 2015, Community edition), all I get is a small black rectangle on the screen (which I later found out that this is actually the title of the setup popup window), without the actual window of the installation.
I have tried it also after a reboot, and with various "versions" of the installation files (web, iso, standalone), but it's always the same situation.
What can I do about it? VS is my main development tool and I really need it on this computer as soon as possible.
Similar problem here. Program install ok but display blank screen after launched.
Problem solved when I changed my Nvidia graphics's global 3D setting to integrated graphics.
Right click desktop
Select Nvidia Control Panel
Select Manage 3D Settings
Under preferred graphics processor, select integrated graphics.
Apply.
If you are using a laptop with an external monitor, try unplugging it and using your primary monitor to launch. This worked for me. Laptops often have dual graphics cards and I believe we're hitting some issue with the way the Installer for VS was written (likely WPF)
Once I launced it and started the installation, I could safely plug my monitor in and it kept working properly.
I'm using an AMD GPU, It was a blank white screen but when I hover the mouse over it, I can see the text events
By the way
I went to my AMD Radeon Settings and saw that vs_installershell.exe and vs_setup_bootstrapper.exe were added automatically to the Switchable Graphics list
they were with Not Assigned Option which usually is like High Performace Option
means It would run it with my ATI GPU.
So I clicked on them
Selected Power Saving Option (to work with my Intel GPU)
Which worked and I can see the window of visual studio installer back
after restarting visual studio installer for sure.
whether is your graphics card, just turn on power saving for it.
Had the same issue. Since this topic is not accept any answare, there is one from https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/150888/visual-studio-installer-shows-blank-screen.html
Try to open installer as Admin.
You will probably have blank screen. Do not close it!
Open installer once more.
Hope it help other people with same issue.
the same thing happened to me, i didn't do anything i just waited for it and it started showing it's status, i suggest you close other running programs to avoid conflicts and performance hindering, and try it again.
This seems like a very shoddy issue. I've run into this problem too, and I tested all solutions that I came across online. These all work:
Running the installer as administrator, which is a blank screen. Leave it open and run a second instance of the installer, which will not be blank (doesn't need to be run as administrator the second time.
Changing screen settings so that the laptop screen is not being used.
Downloading the AMD Settings application, and setting vs_installershell.exe to run on powersaving mode. Restart the installer after saving the settings.
Use a default graphics driver instead of the AMD one.
I had the the same problem in my laptop. The temporary solution is: start the installer only without the battery, if installer starts you can connect the cable, it works fine.
I had to run integrated graphics rather than my Nvdia. That solved it for me.
Remember to change it back when programming in OpenGL and DirectX otherwise you may get a list of messages staying that nothing works.
I had the the same problem in my laptop. The work around is, in device management, remove the amd graphics or start the installer only with battery.

Trying to install Visual Studio 2015 community edition but install window becomes invisible

This issue is driving me crazy. I'm on a corporately controlled network but have local administrator rights. This issue is happening with all versions of Visual Studio installer where you initiate the install, then you see the initial splash screen and then that vanishes and it looks like nothing is there. But if you click and drag that area you can see the window borders during the drag. Some portions of the invisible window even respond to mouse clicks. There's even a task bar indication that is blank when you hover over it. I can't even update the current 2013 installation to SP5 because even that window behaves the same way.
However, it just totally hangs the install and since I can't see the install options I don't know if there's a failure or it's just waiting on me to do something.
I've seen several posts about this outside of here but all of them lead to a dead-end.
I have installed Studio on this machine before - actually all versions since 2005 and never have seen this issue until it started about 2 months ago. I did updates galore and all that. Updated my video drivers, blah, blah, blah. I've even tried remoting into this this box and seeing if that would alter the display enough to see what is going on...all to no avail.
The box is beefy (i5, 16GB, 500GB SSD...triple display, etc...) so it more than meets the requirements.
When I try to install any version of Visual Studio, the install window briefly appears and then disappears. However, it is still there, just 100% transparent. Has anyone else seen this before?
I was able to finally find an answer to the invisible install dialog question, it is however not an adequate solution, but an answer. I have to run only one monitor then the install dialog is visible and things proceed normally.
My solution was to disable the graphics card I have on my computer and run on onboard graphics card. It seems that the issue is with the graphics, so forcing the system to use the "regular" graphics card did the trick.
I have to use /Full /Passive from the command line to install on a build server. I would prefer less flashy installer for a more robust one. I am sure its a combination of the graphics card etc. But other installers work.

Corruption of menus in Windows app

I'm the author of a Windows application that's been around for years. The app uses the wxWidgets UI library. For the newest version, we upgraded to the Microsoft c++ compiler in Studio 10 and to the latest Windows SDK library. We did not change much else in the app. Now, several users have reported that after a period of time running the app, the menus go crazy. All of the users reporting the problem are running on Windows XP. The menus either get huge, filling the screen, and have a giant italic font with strikethroughs. Or they get really small, so that the only thing shown are up and down arrows, suggesting the rendering code thinks the screen real estate is too small to display anything else.
You can find example screen shots here:
Once the menus go crazy, all menus are affected, except the standard Windows and MDI menus. The only way to recover is to restart the app.
The code in the app and wxWidgits is a thin layer on top of the standard Windows API. Once the menus are created, afaik Windows manages the rendering.
Any ideas what's going wrong?

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