[Virtualacorn-list] Windows panes flashing under dead full-screen RO

[Jeremy Nicoll - ml virtualacorn]

Chris Hughes <chris at noonehere.co.uk> wrote:

> yes there is away out of this. Press ALT-ENTER/RETURN key together 
> this pushes the VA full screen into a normal Winodws window and then 
> do ALT -ENTER/RETURN again and you are back to normal. Its some 
> background task on windows causing issuew (Zone Alarm was a regular 
> cause of this or some other urgent update notification)

If you get to VA/VRPC running in a window then you've access to the windows
menus along the top and one of those has power on, hard reset and break
options for the emulator.

I've posted here before on why I think it's better to run VRPC in a window
insteasd of full-screen - precisely of this kind of problem.  The underlying
OS needs to be able to attract you attention when eg a firewall ora/v
program produces an alert.  

And it's sensible not to fool yourself into thinking you're running an Acorn
machine - it's an emulation.  You need to be at least moderately aware of
the underlying windows environment.  Lots of users don't seem to accept
this, and have problems as a consequence.


> > The only thing I can seem to do in this situation is to CTRL-ALT-DEL.
> > Not a very satisfactory state of affairs.

But even if you do that you should get Windows' Task Manager at the first
stage rather than have the machine reboot.  Although that gives you the
chance to end processes etc the real significance is it gives you back
control to the other windows apps so you can sort out whatever windows app
is causing the 'problem' in the first place.  Once sorted you can switch
back into VRPC.

> Its not a bug really but an interaction between Windows and a full 
> screen VA windows application. VA is just an application running on 
> Windows.

Indeed.  It worries me that Roger is having so many problems that others
don't see.  Why?

-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.