I have the latest build of Directory Opus 9.1 on Vista Ultimate. Recently, on my Laptop, it seems to forget the double click on desktop setting every time I reboot.
If I disable the setting, apply it, then select "Open the default lister" (or any one of the other settings to launch a lister on double click of the desktop), it seems to work until I reboot. Once I reboot, I can double click the desktop, but it won't open a lister, but it will launch any other way just fine. I had figured it was some type of registry issue even though I have never had this problem on my desktop, which is also running Vista Ultimate.
Well, yesterday I did a format and reload on the laptop, and to my surprise, I still have the same issue. I have icons enabled, the wallpaper is standard non-animated wallpaper, etc.
The double click to launch DOpus is one of my favorite features, and this is driving me crazy to have to disable and re-enable this setting to get it working. Any ideas?
Double-click on desktop in Opus 9 depends on having the helper utility dopusrt.exe running in the background. When you enable the option in Opus dopusrt.exe is automatically started, and is also set to run automatically on system startup. Since it works for you when you enable it but not on a reboot I would say that something is stopping it from running on startup - probably some sort of anti-virus/anti-spyware tool.
I added dopusrt.exe to the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run) manually and it works perfectly now. I am not sure what removed it, but I would assume it was Trend Internet Security 2008. Where does this normally load from?
Note that you can't just run dopusrt.exe by itself - it needs a specific argument as well to put it into double-click mode. The best thing is to let Opus set the option itself, and just try to work out why it's being blocked. I can't tell you what would be blocking it but in our experience Anti Spyware tools are often more trouble than they're worth
Since you're using Vista, check that Windows Defender isn't blocking it.
Go to Control Panel -> Windows Defender, then click Tools at the top, then Software Explorer. Scroll down the list until the GP Software section and you should see one or two Directory Opus entries. One will be for dopusrt.exe (see the right-hand panel). Check that they're both enabled via the buttons at the bottom of the window.
Sometimes you have to click Show for all users but you shouldn't have to for the Opus entries since they're per-user, not machine wide.
It may also be worth double-checking that dopusrt.exe and dopus.exe are not set to run as Administrator. (e.g. If you ever installed Opus 8 on Vista then you may have set this to make Opus work and forgotten about it. It's not needed with Opus 9.) Enter /home into the Opus address bar and, for both dopus.exe and dopusrt.exe, right-click them and choose Properties, then go to the Compatibility tab and ensure none of the boxes are ticked.
I have the /dblclk switch set on it. I had disabled Windows defender, but now that I think about it, I had upgraded from Trend 2007 to 2008 about the time I started seeing the issue. Odd though, once I added it manually under the HKLM rather then HKCU, it has not removed it.
It stopped working again. I looked into my AntiVirus software and was being blocked by TrendMicro's Internet Security 2008. I added it as an exception, and all is well...
Presumably it didn't even warn you that it was blocking dopusrt.exe? It seems typical for "internet security" software to block random applications they knows nothing about without so much as mentioning it in passing to the user, causing more problems than they avoid...
Not singling out TrendMicro here; almost all the "internet security" apps seem to be in the "shoot first, ask questions later, and don't even file a report with the administrator" category. :-/
If a security app thought something on my machine was dodgy enough to disable, I'd damn well like to be informed of it so that I can rectify the situation and investigate the dubious program. If it doesn't have reason to think it's dodgy then it shouldn't have disabled it. Either way the user should be told in a giant red message box that either they have something dodgy installed or something they wanted to run has been stopped from running, and the reasons why, so that there's no mystery when things fail to work/run. Sigh. If that's the cure then bring on the disease.
I agree, but at least Trend does have the option to show you or not. I had all the setting at default which were way too "silent". I have since set everything to "ask me first" to prevent this is the future.
I have attached the log file showing where dopusrt.exe was denied. I hate AV software, but unfortunately it has become a necessary evil.
dopusrt.exe uses SetWindowsHook to detect when the desktop is double-clicked.
SetWindowsHook can also be used for spying purposes so I can totally understand A/V software seeing it as suspicious but I don't understand why any A/V program would ship with defaults where it doesn't tell you something suspicious is running on your machine (what if it does something else that the A/V software cannot detect?), and also doesn't tell you it's disabled something that you might actually want. It's crazy.
Still, at least it can be configured to notify you, once you realise its an option. Just bad defaults, I guess.
