Forums Bug Reports mIRC tends to "sink"

Hello,

I frequently put mIRC in my system tray, and enable it so when I minimize mIRC, it goes to the system tray. Well, for some reason, it seems to do a magic trick and disappear from the system tray when explorer crashes or other windows/apps are forced to quit. I look at the task manager at running processes and i see mIRC is still running, and the remotes are still functioning. This has happened to me numerous times, and I am sure that this is happening to others. I am currently using 6.16 on Win XP home.

thanks-

-Zelda4ever
aka "The Big 'Z'"

EDIT: Typos

I am also a victim of this, infact it has happened to me on all the versions I have tried. It doesn't do it all the time though. On the odd occasion explorer.exe will mess up which will lead to ending it's process mIRC will disappear from my tray but mIRC.exe is still listed as a process.

I never really thought anything of it, I thought it was probably my machine playing up or something.

Windows XP Home Edition mIRC 6.16.

The problem isn't with mIRC, but rather the Windows interface. If you force close a program, especially Explorer, in Windows XP, all of the icons in your tray will disappear. Some programs, unfortunately mIRC doesn't seem to be one of them, check to see if their icon is still being displayed, and if not, regenerates the icon.

This is also present in all windows OS from 95 onwards, unless the app checks its still in the tray, it wont reappear in there.

I would still call this a mIRC problem.
"Why?" you might ask, if it's possible to place your icon back in the tray when (systray|explorer).exe start up again (Which it is) then mIRC should do it.

You should find out why explorer is crashing as it's possibly the result of spyware or other malware. Explorer has crashed unexpectedly no more than three times in the last few years for me.

I've had explorer crash on me more times than that today alone, on both Windows systems I've used (98SE & XP SP2) and it's not even 6PM yet. Neither of them have any (detectable) malware. Windows just seems very susceptible to entropy from general use in my experience, no matter what version I use.

And what point did this have with the original thread topic? None, but after 7 Windows crashes in under 18 hours I've gotta bitch somewhere.

just a crappy computer.

i had this problem too

theres 2 ways to get it to reappear

1. First make sure before hand that you have DDE enable (File->Options->Other->DDE. check enable DDE and enter mirc as the service name). When mirc doesn't appear any more, open a new copy of mirc and enter this command:/dde mirc command "" /showmirc -r this will send a command to the first copy of mirc to show itself.

2. I wrote an application in visual basic that you can use to enter the PID of any running program and it will make it reappear if it doesnt appear any more. If anyone is interested in getting it then email me

JD

Oh but it is a problem with mIRC. Because every icon down there re appears on its own. Because the program's know to re launch their system tray icons, mIRC on the other hand doesn't. I just made an alias that works via remotes to make it re appear kinda like the dde one

Not a very stable computer you have there... I had XP SP2 running just under 8 weeks straight without a reboot ... and I only rebooted so I could swap out a PSU. XP is quite stable even if you run a lot of apps (install/uninstall etc). If you have problems, it is often some form of spyware/adware/trojan/virus/etc or else you made some setting change which was not a good idea.

Regarding the question of "is it a mIRC problem or a Windows problem?" ... it is a Windows problem, but mIRC should still redisplay itself. From what I've seen only perhaps 10-15% of apps redisplay in the tray if you kill explorer (on purpose or from a crash).

Explorer used to crash all the time on here as well, but I honestly can't remember explorer crashing since I stopped using IE.

I personally don't have any issues with IE causing crashes. For that matter, in the 2 months I had my comp running, Explorer only crashed a few times... and they were those automatic-reloading crashes (the ones where Explorer just automatically closes and reloads itself rather than stopping to function).

No no no! This is an incredibly crude way to do this and furthermore wastes CPU cycles. The correct way for a program to implement systray icon recovery on Explorer restart is for it to register to receive the custom message: "TaskbarCreated" using RegisterWindowMessage() as any self-certified Windows programmer should be well aware.

Additionally, for testing purposes, Explorer can be restarted manually by accessing the shut down dialog and then clicking the Cancel button, whilst holding down all the accelerator keys (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT).

EDIT: Re: johndoe2k4haha

There is no need for this since anyone can readily get Systernals Process Explorer for free from Systernals Web site. Right click on the process that you cannot gain access to visually and select "Bring to Front" option.