This bug has been there for ages, and is by far the most annoying (to me at least). I didn’t find any mention of it in the Jira bug tracker.
If, for some reason, Windows Explorer crashes or needs to be restarted, the Spark tray icon disappears, and is not recreated. If Spark was minimized to the tray, the only thing you can do is kill it from task manager and restart it.
Spark shoud listen to the TaskbarCreated message from Windows to detect when the task bar is created, and use this opportunity to recreate the icon. See this page for an example.
Hmm… I just tested this by forcefully crashing explorer.exe on a Windows XP machine, and then started explorer again via Task Manager --> New Task… and the tray icon by the clock did re-populate.
Hmm… I just tested this by forcefully crashing explorer.exe on a Windows XP machine, and then started explorer again via Task Manager → New Task… and the tray icon by the clock did re-populate.
I don’t know about Windows XP (it’s been a while since I used it), but I’m sure the problem exists in Windows 7 and Windows 8 (64bits). Me and all my colleagues are experiencing it.
I can’t try the beta right now because I don’t have access to a XMPP server (connection to Google Talk doesn’t seem to work), but I’ll give it a try tomorrow when I get back to work.
Unrelated side-note, I think I’ve heard GTalk is being migrated away from XMPP to some other proprietary format. Might be why you can’t connect to it anymore…
I’ll try to test on a win7 machine when I can today as well.
Actually, just tried this on my coworker’s Win7 Pro 64 bit SP1 machine by using Task Manager --> explorer.exe --> End Process Tree
Then New Task --> explorer.exe
Spark task tray icon does repopulate by the clock (you have to click the little Up Arrow to show it). I do not have any Win8 machines at the office to test on… but I do at home… I’ll see if I can replicate there.
PS: We are running a custom Spark build taken from the SVN Trunk a few weeks ago now. So this will include anything in the “beta” builds at the link I gave you…
OK, I just tried the beta build, and I have exactly the same problem: after killing and restarting explorer.exe, Spark didn’t recreate its tray icon. I’m using Windows 8 Pro 64 bits
Also, I checked again with my co-workers who are using Windows 7 Pro (32 or 64bits) and they confirmed that they are all experiencing this problem.
hmm, well I can see where this would be an annoying problem for sure… on Windows, explorer.exe crashes are common winkwinksnickersnicker**
I think we’ll need some others to try to replicate since I"m unable to. If we can replicate in a known environment, then we can pin down a bug report and try to fix this issue… however I’m sure you understand that without it being readilly replicatable, it’s tough to solve.
Is there a common piece of software (besides spark) that is installed on your and co-worker’s systems that may be effecting things? There’s a lot that can effect the windows taskbar and tasktray and perhaps something is blocking it? Do other running programs not re-populate when explorer restarts as well (perhaps not isolated to Spark) ? … maybe if you take a screencast or something to show what’s happening (perhaps we are talking about two different things!) … just grasping at ideas…
Is there a common piece of software (besides spark) that is installed on your and co-worker’s systems that may be effecting things? There’s a lot that can effect the windows taskbar and tasktray and perhaps something is blocking it?
Other than Spark, the only piece of sofware that we all use is a something called “OCS Inventory NG Agent for Windows”, which collects information about the machine for administrative purposes.
Do other running programs not re-populate when explorer restarts as well (perhaps not isolated to Spark) ? … maybe if you take a screencast or something to show what’s happening (perhaps we are talking about two different things!) … just grasping at ideas…
Other apps have no problem recreating the tray icon.
Just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing, here’s a screenshot:
Hmm… on my system, the Spark icon is always inside the little popup menu that you have to click the Up Arrow to see (in your screenshot). Does the icon move into that popup menu after explorer relaunches (I know, a basic question, but want to make sure we cover all bases).
Also, are you seeing this behavior when you forcefully crash explorer via Task Manager as well as normal explorer crashes? I have only been testing with focing explorer to end by End Process Tree.
This appears to be the main class that handles the tray icon in windows (there’s another for linux)
Hmm… on my system, the Spark icon is always inside the little popup menu that you have to click the Up Arrow to see (in your screenshot).
That’s something you can control, either by clicking Customize in the popup or by dragging icons to and from the popup.
Does the icon move into that popup menu after explorer relaunches (I know, a basic question, but want to make sure we cover all bases).
No, it’s neither in the tray nor in the popup
Also, are you seeing this behavior when you forcefully crash explorer via Task Manager as well as normal explorer crashes? I have only been testing with focing explorer to end by End Process Tree.
It doesn’t seem to matter how Explorer stops; I see this behavior when it crashes, when I kill it from the task manager, or when I close it properly like this.
Was able to reproduce it on XP in virtual machine (VirtualBox) with some older version of Spark (with uglier icon in systray). Can’t say which version exactly it was. Could be 2.6.3 or some of the older nightly builds (when the systray icon wasn’t fixed yet). After i upgraded Spark to the latest (596) build, it works fine after killing the explorer.exe and starting again. Also wasn’t able to reproduce this in virtual machines with Win7 and Win 8.1 with the latest Spark build, either in popup or sitting in systray. Actually in some cases Spark icon is first one to repopulate.
I cannot not comment on this, that you get annoyed by such a thing, but i can’t imagine how annoyed you should be by Windows Explorer crashing/exiting so often for you Fix you machines…
I cannot not comment on this, that you get annoyed by such a thing, but i can’t imagine how annoyed you should be by Windows Explorer crashing/exiting so often for you Fix you machines…
Actually, most of the time Explorer doesn’t just crash by itself ; I’m working on an app that includes a shell extension, which means I often need to restart Explorer to reload the extension.
I realize it’s probably not a major issue for most people, but it’s very annoying for me…
Just a suggestion – perhaps try killing your local Spark profile and then re-install the latest beta build? I’ve found that some things stay around even after upgrades… perhaps some legacy thing is presisting that behavior?
You can back it up then restore it later if no difference (and if you care about your transcript history).
There should be a Spark folder in %userprofile%/AppData/Roaming/ – back that up then kill it. Also check under the Public (“Everyone” in XP) user profie’s AppData/Roaming directory and do the same if it’s present.
Also, if you had previously installed an old version of Spark at some point, there may also be a Spark folder in the root of your %userprofile% or under %userprofile%/Document (I forget which exactly). Do the same there.
Once all those are backed-up/killed, try a fresh reinstall of the latest beta build and see if the problem presists. fingers crossed
Just a suggestion – perhaps try killing your local Spark profile and then re-install the latest beta build? I’ve found that some things stay around even after upgrades… perhaps some legacy thing is presisting that behavior?
You can back it up then restore it later if no difference (and if you care about your transcript history).
There should be a Spark folder in %userprofile%/AppData/Roaming/ – back that up then kill it. Also check under the Public (“Everyone” in XP) user profie’s AppData/Roaming directory and do the same if it’s present.
Also, if you had previously installed an old version of Spark at some point, there may also be a Spark folder in the root of your %userprofile% or under %userprofile%/Document (I forget which exactly). Do the same there.
Once all those are backed-up/killed, try a fresh reinstall of the latest beta build and see if the problem presists. fingers crossed
I’ll give it a try in two weeks (I’m on vacation now)
lol, as much as I dispise windows, i can’t wait for 8.1 windows 8 sure is asthetically pleasing and very nice looking, and 8.1 looks to improve on that even. the mumbo jumbo about the start button doesn’t bother me… keyboard shortcuts FTW lol
hmm… it clearly mis-behaves in you video - however I still am unable to replicate (in fairness, i’m running a custom build from Trunk compiled using java 7 update 25 and bundled with java 7 update 21 as the embedded jre).
In my screencast, you’ll see spark behaves “normally”… however I also have camstudio misbehave like you did.
Are you using the embedded jre with spark, or the system’s jre? if the embedded, perhaps try swapping it out for a java 7 jre. Just grab the jre7 directory from your Program Files, then copy it into the Spark folder, rename the current jre to something else, then rename jre7 directory to jre. restart spark and try it out.
PS: what do you mean that spark cannot use jre 7 anyays? jre7 actually fixes some bugs that were java related and not spark related, such as the window focus being stolen when a new message was sent to you, etc.
