Missing Windows

[latin-programmer]

Sometimes, windows get lost when switching between desktops. It only happens now and then so it is hard to reproduce. From what I have seen though, it happens more often if:

• You switch with a keyboard shortcut instead of using the right-click option
• You switch quickly between windows
• Your RAM usage is high
• More likely in some applications
  -- Installation wizards (SQL Server installation windows got lost consistently)
  -- Whenever Visual Studio is doing something CPU-intensive

I'll add more information to this whenever it happens now that we have the code to make some calls.

Workaround: Use process hacker to retrieve the window. Sometimes starting a log-off will get the window back when something is not saved (like Word) prompting you to save the work. You can cancel the log-off at that point and get the window back.

Issue on Google code: https://code.google.com/p/mdesktop/issues/detail?id=66

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[latin-programmer]

This happened to me today so I'm documenting the details of what I'm seeing.

The order of events was as follows:

• Switched to desktop 6 where the Transcender app was running (no windows were shown)
• Tried to switch to desktop 1 (no windows were shown)
• Exited from mDesktop and all the windows came back except for the Transcender app
• Started mDesktop again
• Switched windows
• Problem resurfaced and lost all windows.
• Exited mDesktop again. All windows were lost.

This is the first time since I posted the original issue that the bug has re-occurred. I'll try next time to get more technical information about the window handles. I did get some screenshots:

The first image shows MDesktop being "confused" by having a checkbox on the third window (named "Meetings") while the number still displays "1" and the windows are all lost. This is usually the other symptom that goes along with losing the windows.

The second screenshot shows that Process Hacker's "Window" option is greyed-out so it is not possible to recover that particular window with that shortcut. I was still able to recover the window using the following suggestion from Jason Stallings in Process Hacker: "Use View/Windows, sort [by Text], right click the lost window and select Visible."

[MPagel]

(thanks for inputting this bug into GetHub, I've just recently switched back to Windows (8.1) from Linux, and this was the most annoying bug I encountered a couple years ago)

--original reporter for bugs #66, #150, #152; requests #65, #112

[octalmage]

Unfortunately since I've been using Mac OS exclusively for the past few years it's hard for me to troubleshoot these kind of issues.

I'm going to try to get to #9 this week so it doesn't cause any data loss, it would be awesome if we could find reliable replication steps!