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Hoopy frood
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Hoopy frood
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mIRC 7.72
Windows 11 22H2 build 22621.1344

I believe this Windows update may have tray changes which affect mIRC's behavior.

Expected result: Starting mIRC, the window should be opened on the desktop.
Actual result: Starting mIRC, it is minimized to the tray. The tip 'mIRC has been minimized to the system tray' is shown.

Reproduction steps:
1. Have mIRC open (either minimized to the tray or open on desktop)
2. Restart Windows (Right click start button > Shut down or sign out > Restart)
3. Start mIRC via Start menu shortcut
4. mIRC starts in the tray and displays the tooltip

Notes:
I have mIRC pinned to the Start menu but not to the taskbar.
I think this problems occurs only if mIRC is running and shows in the tray when Windows is restarted.
The setting 'On startup minimize mIRC to tray' is disabled.
The setting 'Enable tips' is disabled.

Also, in some cases after double clicking mIRC in the tray the mIRC window is opened behind my currently opened windows. I have not been able to narrow down reproduction steps for this.

Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Dc98vmZ

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Hoopy frood
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Hoopy frood
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Thanks for your bug report.

Just to clarify: if mIRC is minimized when it exits, it will remember this state. The next time you run it, it will open minimized. This is intended.

So I assume the issue you are reporting is that when mIRC is open/visible/not minimized, and you restart windows, that it then opens minimized the next time you run it?

If you do the following: run mIRC, make sure it is open/visible, and restart Windows. Before running mIRC again, check the mirc.ini [windows] section. What does the "main" item show?

Last edited by Khaled; 04/03/23 12:52 PM.
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Hoopy frood
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Code
main=422,1079,266,725,3,0,0

I see the 3 means minimized. Maybe this has always been the behavior and I never noticed until now because of the tooltip. It's the tooltip which really annoys me though, so if this starting minimized after rebooting is intended (seems strange) then okay. But I'm confident this tooltip has not been appearing the whole time.

Or is mIRC.ini failing to save every time I reboot? Is that why I have all these 0B mirc3928470.tm_ files? I have turned off all remotes for testing in case some hanging dll may have been the cause. This time I noted the timestamps - mIRC.ini was stamped 9:41 when I rebooted Windows. After logging back in and before starting mIRC, mIRC.ini is still 9:41 and there is a new 0B mirc7197848.tm_ stamped at 9:44 which is the time I rebooted.

So it seems these are 2 separate bugs, I have probably been experiencing this failure-to-save on reboot for a while given the tm files. Then the tooltip appearing is the new bug which I think coincides with the new Windows build.

And note: the tooltip pops up even without having to restarting windows. Just close mIRC while it's minimized and when next you open it, it will start minimized and the tooltip appears.

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Hoopy frood
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Hoopy frood
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Thanks for your feedback.

If you minimize mIRC, exit, and run mIRC again, it will open minimized. mIRC remembers whether it was visible or minimized when it last exited and displays itself in the same state when it is run the next time. This has always been the case.

If mIRC starts minimized to tray, and Windows places its icon in the hidden tray area, mIRC will display the tip. This was previously discussed and I added this feature specifically because users where having difficulty finding mIRC due to the way Windows hides some tray icons.

I have not been able to reproduce the issue that you originally reported, ie. that if mIRC is visible, and you restart Windows, when you run mIRC later, that it is minimized to the Windows tray. I tested this with different versions of Windows, including Windows 11 with the latest updates.

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Hoopy frood
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Okay, I see that this tray tip notification was added in 7.71.

Quote
If you minimize mIRC, exit, and run mIRC again, it will open minimized. mIRC remembers whether it was visible or minimized when it last exited and displays itself in the same state when it is run the next time. This has always been the case.

...

I have not been able to reproduce the issue that you originally reported, ie. that if mIRC is visible, and you restart Windows, when you run mIRC later, that it is minimized to the Windows tray. I tested this with different versions of Windows, including Windows 11 with the latest updates.

Yes, this must be happening because in general mIRC is failing to save mIRC.ini for me and this startup/tray is just a side effect of that. I know you've spent a lot of time on preventing loss of mIRC.ini before, and as it's not causing me any major problems we can dismiss the system restart scenario and generally consider that mIRC is minimizing to tray as designed.

Quote
If mIRC starts minimized to tray, and Windows places its icon in the hidden tray area, mIRC will display the tip.

But it's not being placed in the hidden tray area, the icon is always visible and the tooltip still is displayed. If you can't isolate the notification to when the tray icon is only in the hidden area, is it possible that it respect the global 'Enable tips' option, or can a new option be added to disable this tip specifically?

You said "latest updates", but are you on at the least the build # from my original post? It's only a few days old and might be rolling out in waves. That said, maybe the Windows update isn't the cause. But 5 months is a long time for me not to have noticed this before. And there were specific tray changes in the update:

Quote
https://support.microsoft.com/en-au...iew-3e38c0d9-924d-4f3f-b0b6-3bd49b2657b9
New! This update enhances the system tray. All icons will have a rounded focus and hover treatment in the lower right, including the “Show hidden icons” flyout menu. You can move icons to rearrange them in the “Show hidden icons” flyout menu or move icons to the taskbar.

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Hoopy frood
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Hoopy frood
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Quote
Yes, this must be happening because in general mIRC is failing to save mIRC.ini for me and this startup/tray is just a side effect of that.
That does not seem to be the issue here. If you are seeing a "3" in "main", this means that on exit, mIRC thinks it is minimized and is saving "3" to indicate that.

Quote
But it's not being placed in the hidden tray area, the icon is always visible and the tooltip still is displayed.
I just tested this on Windows 7, 10, and 11, and the only time I see the tip is when Windows hides the mIRC icon in the hidden Windows tray area. When mIRC is displayed in the visible tray, the tip is never shown.

Can you please try the following:

Right-click on the taskbar, open "TaskBar Settings", and in "Notification area", DISABLE "show all icons in the notification area". Scroll down the list to where "mIRC" is and turn it OFF. Now:

1. Run mIRC.
2. In Options/Display/Options/Tray, enable "On startup minimize mIRC to tray".
3. Exit mIRC.
4. Run mIRC.
5. mIRC should now startup up minimized to the visible tray.
6. If you follow the above steps, you should not see the tip.

If you right-click on the taskbar, open "TaskBar Settings", and in "Notification area", ENABLE "show all icons in the notification area". Scroll down the list to where "mIRC" is and turn it ON.

If you now run mIRC, it should be in the hidden tray icon area, and you should see the tip.

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Hoopy frood
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That does not seem to be the issue here. If you are seeing a "3" in "main", this means that on exit, mIRC thinks it is minimized and is saving "3" to indicate that.
While mIRC is still open on the desktop I check the value in mIRC.ini and it is '3'. It is only updated to '0' when I close mIRC. When restarting it fails to write this '0'.


Quote
Right-click on the taskbar, open "TaskBar Settings", and in "Notification area", DISABLE "show all icons in the notification area". Scroll down the list to where "mIRC" is and turn it OFF.
The settings are not nested and labeled as you have described. Are you describing Windows 10? Or has this whole page changed in this WIndows 11 build? Regardless, I toggled all combination of controls and in every case the tip is shown.


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Hoopy frood
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Hoopy frood
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Quote
hile mIRC is still open on the desktop I check the value in mIRC.ini and it is '3'. It is only updated to '0' when I close mIRC. When restarting it fails to write this '0'.
Thanks for confirming. So this is the same issue we've seen in the past where, for some users, Windows is force-closing mIRC before it has a chance to finish updating mirc.ini.

Quote
The settings are not nested and labeled as you have described. Are you describing Windows 10? Or has this whole page changed in this WIndows 11 build? Regardless, I toggled all combination of controls and in every case the tip is shown.
Yes, I was testing in Windows 10 in this case. But the notifcation settings are more or less the same in Windows 11.

My copy of Windows 11 found another update and it is now the same as your version. I am seeing the same issue as you in this version of Windows 11.

After spending the last few hours testing it out, it looks like the latest Windows 11 update has broken all of the standard methods that are widely used to get information about the tray area. mIRC actually has four different implementations for this - each using different APIs. It was using the simplest method, which previously worked on all versions of Windows. None of the four implementations work on the latest Windows 11 - even the most basic API calls fail.

It's difficult to say exactly why these methods are no longer working - it could be that Windows 11 is using a stricter security model that prevents Win32 applications from accessing this information.

In any case, I also noticed that Windows 11 allows you to hide the hidden tray area. This means that if mIRC is minimized to tray, and Windows places it in the hidden tray area, and the hidden tray area is hidden - you will simply not be able to access mIRC. And since there no longer seems to be a way for an application to determine whether its tray icon is hidden or not under Windows 11, this undermines the use of the tray area for applications that have a "minimize to tray" feature.

I am going to remove support for the "tip" warning that mIRC is minimized to the tray, since there does not seem to be a way to make this work correctly any more in Windows 11. This change will be in the next beta.

Update: It looks like this issue is due to Microsoft changing core parts of the Windows interface to XAML controls. The tray information should still be accessible, using WinUI and XAML via Win32 applications but C++ examples are sparse. All applications that previously needed to read the contents of the tray are now broken and need to be updated for the latest version of Windows 11 but still need to use the older methods for previous versions of Windows.

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Hoopy frood
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FYI, if the windows setting "Automatically hide the taskbar" is enabled then the minimize tooltip is shown when mIRC starts in the tray


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