[Virtualacorn-list] It Happened Again

[Julian Fry]

On 26 Apr 2011 Roger Darlington  wrote:


> It has happened again. What happened again is too long to fit in a
> subject heading.

> I was running both Windows 7 and RO 4.39 (full details at foot of
> e-mail) straight from Boot-up. I had plugged in an 8GB SDHC card into
> a card reader which was plugged into a USB port.

> It was copying about 7GB of JPEG photos onto an internal hard-drive
> with oodles of free-space, which had copied well over 4GB when, all of
> a sudden, I could see bits of the Windows furniture ON TOP of the
> RiscOS Window (which is running full-screen). I could also see two
> pointers: the RO one (which was imobile) and the Windows7 one (which
> could move). No keyboard presses were operative on RO, in particular
> ALT-RET would not do anything. Nor would any other RO keys. It was
> dead, but wouldn't relinquish being on top of the windows desktop.

> The only bits of windows furniture that were on top of the (dead) RO
> desktop were those windows GADGETS I had configured on the windows
> desktop, such as a Calender, CoreTemp, and the Weather gadget. Some
> minor windows bits were also on top of the dead RO desktop, but not
> any of the windows' programs icons.

> Moreover, I could not shut down Windows. When I positioned the Windows
> pointer in the bottom LH corner where the Windows START icon was
> hidden beneath the RO desktop, I could click the windows mouse on it.
> Up would flash the windows window for accessing the start menu (but it
> also almost instantly vanished again. - In particular, try as I might,
> I could not move the windows pointer fast enough over to where the
> windows Shutdown Computer icon is before it vanished again. Wherever I
> clicked (with the windows pointer) I was in danger of activating the
> windows icons which were all  (all except the windows gadgets) hidden
> beneath the dead RO full-screen window.

Although this might be irrelevant, I sometimes get what might be a 
similar situation. (I am running Windows XP Home, VRPC-SE, RO 6.10)

What seems to happen is that Windows wants to display something while 
I am running VRPC full screen. The message flashes up but is 
immediately overwritten by the VRPC window. However VRPC is no longer 
in control. If I move the windows cursor over the screen, parts of the 
underlying Windows screen appear and rapidly disappear again. I know 
where the RO icon on the bottom tool bar is so if I move the cursor 
here and click the mouse I can usually give control back to VRPC and, 
with a bit of fiddling, recover the situation.

I hope that may be of some help.

> Is there a Windows  keyboard shortcut to Shutdown the windows
> Computer? I'll have to write that down on the LCD monitor so's I'll
> remember it if it happens again.

> I reported something similar about 4 or 6 months ago.

>  64-bit Windows 7 with 6GB RAM, ARM VA7500 model, RO 4.39. RO
> VA-Adjust 16MB VRAM.



-- 
Cheers

Julian Fry