FreeCommander XE and X-Mouse (TweakUI) conflict

[dsl101]

I'm not sure what's started this happening, as they've been running together for ages quite happily (months). I use X-Mouse (Window Activation Follows Mouse) from TweakUI, and noticed recently that it had stopped working. When I opened TweakUI, the checkbox for X-Mouse was clear. So I set it again, and then some time later it stopped working again. I set up a filtered capture in procmon.exe to look for which registry entry was involved, and on setting / clearing the checkbox in TweakUI, I can see this registry setting being updated:

HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask

I then left procmon filtering on that registry key, and the only other app it picked up was FreeCommander. Can I ask whether this is a side effect of something FC is doing? It might be a bug, or it could be something else.

I also recently updated to build 650 of FC, so perhaps this is already dealt with. I'll keep an eye out for it - I haven't been able to provoke FC into doing it, so I'm not sure exactly why / when it happens.

Thanks,

Dave.

[joby_toss]

I don't know how to help you here, but I know that this one would be very hard to track down.

Could you try with FC XE portable using the default settings (just unzip and run) and see if it still happens?

[dsl101]

Sorry - should have said. I've been using the portable version since day 1. As this only just started happening (after many months), I'm at a bit of a loss as to what triggered it. I didn't update TweakUI or FC XE, and don't remember anything else changing significantly...

I'll keep an eye on the new build and see if it recurs.

Tx,

Dave.

[dsl101]

Well, it's by no means definitive, but it is still happening. Sadly, I can't always catch it in the act, as ProcMon doesn't seem to like running all day (runs out of memory I suspect). But, I have seen many many accesses to that registry key from FC. Using ProcMon and ProcExplorer, I tracked it down to thread 4716 (on my machine). The details for that thread are:

TID Start Address
4716 FreeCommander.exe+0xa550b0

and the stack for thread 4716 is:

ntkrnlpa.exe+0x6eacb
ntkrnlpa.exe!MmIsDriverVerifying+0xbc4
ntkrnlpa.exe!MmIsDriverVerifying+0x14a6
win32k.sys+0x2f70
win32k.sys+0x3779
win32k.sys+0x3796
ntdll.dll!KiFastSystemCallRet
FreeCommander.exe+0x2033f0
FreeCommander.exe+0x73f56a
kernel32.dll!RegisterWaitForInputIdle+0x49

Not sure if that adds anything to tracking down the source - and note that at the moment, these are only reads of the registry key - it's the writes which change the setting, and I've yet to capture one of those. Will keep you posted.

thanks,

David.

[H.Seldon]

I don't know if this will help, but here is more information on registry entries to enable x-mouse behavior:

http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/ ... 2.aspx#110
Look for X-Mouse, Table 5.6

http://superuser.com/questions/76315/ho ... windows-xp

[dsl101]

OK - the culprit has been found. Not FC, and not happening via the registry. Seems like that was a wild goose chase. Sorry to have taken your time...