Blank white window with 64-bit version

[thx1024]

I'm yet another major Everything fan, been using it for years.

Naturally I wanted to graduate to 64-bit a while back, so I started with the betas and now I'm on Version 1.3.4.686 (x64).

Unfortunately, I have a weird behavior to report with every 64-bit version I've tried. This doesn't happen right away after boot, but after I've run a few searches, something makes a very odd window appear, with the following attributes:

1) It's completely blank, nothing but featureless white.

2) It's full-screen, even obscuring the Windows taskbar.

3) On the taskbar it groups with any other Everything search window that's open.

4) Hovering anywhere over it exhibits the "busy" mouse pointer, and clicking around on it (left or right button) has no effect.

5) It has window class EVERYTHING_TASKBAR_NOTIFICATION, which I thought I'd gathered was limited to just the actual tray icon itself.

6) It does not prevent me from using Alt-Tab to get back to any search windows I had open, and they all continue to work normally even while the blank window is visible in the background.

7) I found I can actually force it to appear on cue by right-clicking the tray icon to get the popup menu and then either selecting any menu item or even clicking out somewhere else, such as on the taskbar, without selecting a menu item.

8) It does not appear when running in Safe Mode, either on its own or if I try to force it.

This has been happening no matter how I run Everything, whether using the service or not, running as administrator or not. Search windows all function normally whether it has appeared or not.

I have a 6-month-old Dell system with Win7 Pro 64-bit SP1 and a couple of NTFS-formatted drives. I couldn't find a forum reference to any behavior remotely like this. I tried using the debug console to see if anything suspicious is logged at the time the blank window appears, but didn't notice anything remarkable. Any ideas?

[void]

Hmm... very odd...

Does Alt + F4 on the white window close Everything?
Has there ever been more than one of these white window?

There might be a conflict with the class name EVERYTHING_TASKBAR_NOTIFICATION, please try changing the window class name:

• Completely exit Everything
• Restart Everything with the command line option -instance test:

  Code: Select all

  Everything.exe -instance test

[thx1024]

Yes, I forgot to mention that Alt + F4 does indeed close the white window and also exits the instance of Everything running in the tray; the service remains running, of course. And there has never been more than one instance of the white window at any one time; I tried to force it just now, and I couldn't.

I tried the test you suggested, completely exiting Everything (including stopping the service) and running "Everything.exe -instance test" from an elevated command prompt. It loaded, and the white window still appeared when I clicked into the Everything tray icon menu and then clicked on the Windows taskbar (and, in a second similar test, it appeared when I actually selected any menu item from the tray menu). I checked the window class of the white window, and it was "EVERYTHING_TASKBAR_NOTIFICATION_(test)".

Happy to continue testing!

[void]

Please run Everything in verbose debug mode:

• Completely Exit Everything.
• Run Everything with the following command line options:

  Code: Select all

  Everything.exe -debug -verbose -startup

• The -verbose option will log every message to this window in the debug console.
• The -startup option will not show any search windows and only create the system tray icon.
• Try forcing the "white window".
• What is displayed in the debug console?

[thx1024]

I decided to run that last test in a clean mode with no unnecessary apps running, and when I did I found that I could no longer reproduce the white window problem. Yes, of course it was all my own fault in the end!

Explanation:

One of my long-standing always-running apps is a compiled Autohotkey program that I wrote to provide a lot of small helper features, and one of those was to immediately maximize any Everything search window as soon as it appeared. I added this long back because my search windows under the 32-bit version of Everything didn't always seem to remember to be maximized, and I only want to work with them that way. This always worked beautifully under the 32-bit version of Everything, but through some debugging today I confirmed that it was causing the white window behavior under the 64-bit version. Needless to say, I've removed that feature from my Autohotkey app.

My apologies! But I'm happy that it wasn't a problem with Everything, and even happier to be able to use the 64-bit version with no troubles, at last.

Thanks so much for keeping up development on this indispensable tool!