Control Panel and DO 10

I did check the compatability mode settings.

It was stated that Control Panel can't be opened from DO. Can it be opened from the Start Menu? How might one open Control Panel from DO anyway?

I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but I seem to vaguely recall some Opus interface to Control Panel that was available in XP not being available in Windows 7. Could this be relevant?

From DO:
Desktop->Control Panel

No, it can not be opened from start menu in my case. Or from shortcut on desktop or taskbar. It can however be opened from explorer.


Regards, AB

CP won't open from toolbar button either.

Make sure you're not running Opus as administrator.

Running as administrator had no effect.

Opus shouldn't be running as administrator. Make sure it isn't (details in the thing Jon linked to) as that's something that could cause what you're seeing.

Edit: A quick way to check is to try making a folder below C:\Program Files. If you don't get a UAC prompt and it succeeds in creating the folder, then Opus is running as administrator (or UAC is turned off).

Well UAC is turned off. Opus created a new folder in Program files without getting a UAC prompt.

Can you run any programs from within Opus?
Try turning off your anti-virus/anti-spyware and see if that makes a difference.

I can run any other programs from within Opus just fine. Control Panel issue is systemwide. Issue is only present when DO is installed and Explorer Replacement -setting is set to any other than "Don't replace explorer".

No difference when anti-virus etc turned off. (DO is whitelisted anyway).

This is a long shot but try double-clicking the Opus_SetDllDirectory_Disable.reg in the attached zip, then restarting Opus.

Opus_SetDllDirectory.zip (681 Bytes)
Important: After making the registry change, fully exit Opus and then restart it. (Don't just close all the Opus windows. Exit it completely as described in the linked post. If in doubt, reboot after applying the registry file.)

If it doesn't help, do the same with the other .reg file in the zip to go back to normal. (The normal mode is more secure, but causes problems for some shell extensions.)

That didn't work either.

Could you post a screenshot of the "Unspecified Error" message, in case the style of message box indicates anything? (e.g. that it's coming from Opus itself or from another component.)

You can attach screenshots by using the "Full Editor" to reply. (Don't use Quick Reply.) Just under the place where you write your post is a thing to let you upload files.

Also, if you're familiar with Process Monitor, it might be worth using that to see which files or registry settings are accessed leading up to the failure. That may indicate an avenue to investigate. But if you're not familiar with Process Monitor then it can be difficult to sift through the data to work out the useful parts from the noise.

Here's the screenshot. I am not familiar with Process Monitor.

Please give this a try, it looks like a fix for the same issue:

winhelponline.com/blog/fix-f ... windows-7/

That fixed it! Thank you sir. I'm just wondering how this problem is related to Opus.

Excellent!

I'm not sure it was directly related to Opus. When launching Control Panel with Explorer Replacement turned on, the request to open a folder gets intercepted and routed to Opus, and Opus then says, "actually, I don't want to open this myself so I'll ask Explorer to open it after all." Opus then asks Explorer to open Control Panel in a similar way to what it does when you use the toolbar/menu item which does the same thing.

Something was broken in the registry settings for folders which meant that when Opus asked the OS to open the Control Panel folder it was failing. It would probably also have failed for any other program that asked for Control Panel to open via the same method.

Explorer itself takes shortcuts and does not depend on the same registry settings that everything else does when launching folders, so it was still able to open the Control Panel folder (provided it handled the request itself, without it being diverted to Opus).

Ok, I see. So when Opus is set to replace Explorer it intercept ALL folder events?

It's not literally all folder events, but it will intercept some which it then decides to send back, yes.