I am having 2 troubles with starting DOpus -- one is a long-standing problem and more an irritation than anything, and the new one is not good.
Problem of long standing: The first time I start DOpus (after a boot-up) I need to click the icon on the left side of my system tray once, then wait for disk activity to stop, then click the icon a second time. The problem started a year or so ago, and did not pre-exist.
As of yesterday, DOpus refuses to start at all. I have to go into Process Explorer and kill the processes for both dopus.exe and dopusrt.exe. Sometimes I have to go through this exercise of trying to start DOpus and then killing its processes before DOpus will display on-screen. It seems that the processes are running, but the program is not becoming full activated.
Any idea what's wrong?
If I try reinstalling DOpus, what files do I need to save in order to save my custom toolbars and menus?
I have the latest version (9.1.3.0.3449.x86) installed.
No, I mean single click. These are the icons next to the Windows Start button, and they all work with a single click, at least the way I have my system set up.
Once I get DOpus running with the single click - pause - single click routine, then I can close DOpus and it will restart with a single click (as many times as I want during a computer session).
Also, thanks for the save-setup instructions -- couldn't be simplier.
Are you talking about the Quick Launch bar maybe? There are no icons next to the Windows Start button by default so it's hard to know exactly what you mean - maybe you could post a screenshot?
Anyway if you are talking about the Quick Launch bar then the behaviour depends upon what the shortcut in the bar actually does - Opus doesn't set this up so you must have done it yourself. If you right click on the icon and choose Properties, what does it say? Maybe post a screenshot of that as well.
In the meantime I have uninstalled/reinstalled DOpus and have reloaded my DOpus setup and license. I am still having a related problem, but with somewhat different symptoms.
DOpus appears to be trying to load my previously displayed directory, but stalls, showing an hour glass. This condition is shown in the first attached screenshot (although the hour glass does not show). Note that the tree in the left pane has not opened up. This shot also shows the quick-start Icon.
The next two screen shots show the condition as shown by Task Manager and Process Explorer. Task Manager shows two instances running, of which one must be Dopusrt.exe, which I am surprised shows up here, since I haven't seen it there before. Both always show in Process Explorer.
If I kill both processes, the DOpus does open up correctly with one click of the Quickstart icon. (Note that I have DOpus set up to start up manually, rather than automatically at bootup.)
The Dopus startup apparently hangs when trying to load the initial lister. There is stuff in the tree panel, although it is not complete, and nothing in the lister pane. This is so whether or not I have specified an initial directory in the properties for the quickstart or desktop icon.
I have to kill both the DOPUS.EXE and DOPUSRT.EXE processes with Process Explorer (Task Manager gets only one of them), and then try again. Sometimes Dopus loads on the next try, sometimes it takes several kill/reload attempts.
DOPUSRT.EXE seems to be the problem. I have tried eliminating it from starting during bootup (using MSCONFIG), but it always reappears in the queue -- I guess when DOpus is run it reestablishes that setting.
I have uninstalled/reinstalled a fresh download of DOpus, to no effect. I even ran a registry cleaner after the uninstall. Any idea what is wrong here?
Thanks for your links to FAQs for solving mysterious problems. They are long list, and I spent all yesterday afternoon and evening working toward the bottom. This morning, near the bottom, I tried booting into Safe Mode, and "no problem," so that led to a solution. Since a safe mode boot is simple thing, perhaps it should be near the top of the list.
After a few hours of reboots with various groups of startup items on or off (using Autorun), I narrowed it down to the CULPRIT:
REALSCHED.EXE, otherwise known as TKBELLEXE
It is something I have rooted out of my machine repeatedly for years, to no avail. I just now set its trust level in ZoneAlarm to "kill," which will keep it from running, and hopefully from being reinstalled.
This also solved my long-standing problem of having to click the Quick Launch tray icon twice (two single clicks, with pause in between for disk activity) the first time I start DOpus.
Well, after all these months I started having these same sorts of problems again.
And once again I found that TKBELLEXE has crept back into my system. The reason is that a few days ago I had to completely remove ZoneAlarm from my system because of conflict with a new program I am using. ZA had been successfully keeping TKBELLEXE (aka RealSched.exe) from reinstalling itself in my startup services.
TKBELLEXE is a huge conflict with DOpus, and because Real Player and its TKBELLEXE are ubiquitious and will likely preclude many potential users from adopting DOpus, I suggest that a solution to this conflict be found.
TKBELLEXE is an absolute annoyance, and is aggressive and intractable. Unfortunately we have to find ways to live with it when having Real Player installed is necessary.
I'll see if I can reproduce this in a virtual machine.
Which version of Real Player installs this unwanted thing? If I click the "RealPlayer SP" (which downloads RealPlayerSPGold.exe) link on their website will I get the right thing to reproduce the problem?
Out of pure curiosity, what still requires RealPlayer these days? I haven't had it installed for years. (No Quicktime either, after it persistently messed with Internet Explorer's PNG image support and forced unwanted junk on my machine. What is it with video players that mess with other software? )
I'll see if I can reproduce this in a virtual machine.
Thanks for checking into it, Leo.
Which version of Real Player installs this unwanted thing? If I click the "RealPlayer SP" (which downloads RealPlayerSPGold.exe) link on their website will I get the right thing to reproduce the problem?
I currently have Real Player 11.0.2; however, this problem has occurred with earlier versions as well. The TKBELLEXE thing has existed, I think, from the beginning and is an annoyance for which there are many hits on a google search. I don't know what Real Player SP is.
Out of pure curiosity, what still requires RealPlayer these days?
A lot of video streams that I pick up load through Real Player. However, maybe I'm behind the times and just haven't realized how to play streams by other means. If I knew how to ditch both Real Player and QuickTime, I would gladly do so. Frankly I have always considered Real Player to be a security risk, but haven't known how to avoid using it. What do you use for covering tasks that RP or QT otherwise would? The streams I hit that are loading Real Player are accessed through a link that loads a "default.ram" file which contains a RTSP link. Any advice gladly considered.
The only edition of RealPlayer I can find on real.com is RealPlayer SP.
Once installed it reports itself as version 1.1.5 (build 12.0.0.879).
It has also installed realsched.exe.
However, on the 32-bit XP test machine I'm using I don't have any problems at all starting Opus.
Whatever is going wrong on your machine must be down to something more complex than simply having RealPlayer (at least RealPlayer SP) installed.
Was the problem still there when you had ZoneAlarm removed? ZA has caused loads of problems over the years and seems to break software without telling you it's breaking it, making it very hard to work out what went wrong (you end up looking at the symptoms of a breakage, not the cause). Perhaps ZA (or something else you have installed -- I see a lot of tools which hook into other programs and shell extensions in your list of processes) is interfering with realsched.exe which in turn is causing Opus to block on something? Just a theory.
Fair enough. I don't know a good alternative if you need streaming to work. I don't think I ever come across sites that still use Real for streaming but I guess some still do.
Actually, rather than ZoneAlarm being the problem, the reverse is true. I was able to use ZoneAlarm to prevent TKBELLEXE from being added to my start folder. When I had to abandon ZA for other reasons, that is when the TKBELLEXE problem began to recur uncontrollably (at RealPlayer's whim).
You may well be right that other programs in my start folder are interacitng with TKBELLEXE to cause the problem with DOpus; however, I can't do without them (or DOpus), so I will just have to periodically remove the TK nuisance from my start folder when things jamb up. At least until I figure out a way to get rid of RealPlayer once and for all!
Thanks for the attention you have given this. Much appreciated.
A quick google shows that TKBELLEXE is the update checker for Real Player. It is suggested that you untick the update check in Real Players prefs, and then delete the startup entry for it. It shouldn't come back - so google tells me...
Another quick google shows that it's quite easy to permanently remove Real Player...
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