Start Is Back - 2.1 release

[Naito]

Hey Tihiy,

First of all, awesome application you have created! Love the features and customization. Very light and no extra services. I liked it that much, I bought 10 licenses, even though I only have 2 PCs running Windows 8

Now, I may be 'nitpicking' a little bit here, as the program is otherwise seemingly perfect, but I have found the following issues and inconsistencies:

• When using two-finger scrolling on a notebook touchpad, the user profile picture pop behind the start menu, cutting half of it off. I have not been able to replicate it with a mouse. See attachment.
  
• After using the 'Search programs and files' search bar, the text still remains grey, rather than changing to black, like in Windows 7. Not sure if design choice, though.
  
• Upon opening the SIB start menu for the first time, immediately or otherwise after a fresh boot/restart, many of the icons/folders take a considerable amount of time to appear. Computer is rather modern, so shouldn't be a speed issue. Maybe a issue with caching? See attachment.
  

I have tried clean installing the latest version (v1.33) to correct the above issues, but to no prevail.

Thank you for your time and effort! Keep up the great work!

Cheers,

Naito.

Edited January 19, 2013 by Naito

[roirraWedorehT]

I wish we could figure out what's causing some people to have a delay in icon loading / start menu populating. I've never had any noticeable delay under one each desktop and laptop and VMWare installations.

[ender`]

I haven't seen delays in StartIsBack, but Start Screen -> All programs takes forever to load icons for me.

[Tihiy]

[*]When using two-finger scrolling on a notebook touchpad, the user profile picture pop behind the start menu, cutting half of it off. I have not been able to replicate it with a mouse. See attachment.

That's obviously a touchpad driver issue which pushes start menu window on top. Perhaps i can work this around.

[*]After using the 'Search programs and files' search bar, the text still remains grey, rather than changing to black, like in Windows 7. Not sure if design choice, though.

That's the style for default search control.

[*]Upon opening the SIB start menu for the first time, immediately or otherwise after a fresh boot/restart, many of the icons/folders take a considerable amount of time to appear. Computer is rather modern, so shouldn't be a speed issue. Maybe a issue with caching?

Something slows disk i/o down. Windows Defender is known to cause big slowdowns.

[Naito]

Something slows disk i/o down. Windows Defender is known to cause big slowdowns.

Thanks for the reply. I can confirm something is slowing it down, not sure if it is Defender though. The system is using an SSD, so would have thought slow I/O would have very little effect. Regardless, it works fine on my second PC fine , after further investigation.

[roirraWedorehT]

Maybe we can narrow down the cause by finding out if all those who experience this issue have the same hard drive controller or brand in their motherboard(s). Is yours VIA, Intel, nVidia, ATI, ...? If you don't know and don't know how to find out just give your exact make and model of motherboard or PC if it's a pre-built system and we can find out from there.

[Amigafever]

Asus P5K Premium WIFI-AP

[roirraWedorehT]

Asus P5K Premium WIFI-AP

Okay, so it looks like on yours it's:

JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller

Anyone else? How about you, Naito?

Edited January 20, 2013 by roirraW "edor" ehT

[ender`]

I noticed something unusual recently: I press the Windows key, type power and then press Ctr+Shift+Enter (to run PowerShell as Administrator), but instead of PowerShell, Paint Shop Pro starts (even though PowerShell icon was selected, and Paint Shop Pro wasn't even on the list of results. If I then press the Windows key again and type something to search, the taskbar and Start Menu freeze, and I have to kill and restart explorer.exe.

Edit: actually, after that happens, doing anything with the Start Menu will freeze it and the taskbar. Also, it appears that typing anything and pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter triggers the problem (and it's always PSP trying to start up in debug mode, regardless of what I type)

Using StartIsBack 1.3.3 on Windows 8 Pro x64.

Edited January 20, 2013 by ender`

[roirraWedorehT]

I couldn't reproduce that initially. I even already had the latest version of Paint Shop Pro installed already, too. I pressed Control-Shift-Enter over PowerShell and it indeed gives me the UAC prompt to open it raised, and it does open. However, now when I do it, I get the attached screenshot. After I press "Cancel", then a UAC prompt for PowerShell opens. Everything behaves normally from then on other than the PSP debugging prompt each time I do the same thing after that. BTW, while the PSP Debug prompt is open, things behave sluggishly or seem to freeze until I Cancel that prompt.

Running v1.3.3 under Windows 8 Enterprise x64 at the moment.

Edited January 20, 2013 by roirraW "edor" ehT

[Tribes11]

Is it possible for you to bring back Aero Glass feature just like on Windows 7 in future versions of StartIsBack? I know it's a Start Menu related application, however you maybe can work on another Windows 7-like Program called AeroGlassIsBack for example.

I gladly bought this StartIsBack software when it still was on 1.0 cause after I've installed I just realised how awesome and better than all the other "fake Windows 7 like" start menus i've tested, so I bought it right away, and It keeps getting better.

So why not ask for this? Since you made the best and only Windows 7-truly like Start Menu for Windows 8

[ender`]

Yeah, that's the exact dialog I get. Things don't freeze while it's open, only afterwards.

For me nothing happens when I click either of the buttons - the elevated program never opens (I don't get the UAC prompt because I've got it set to elevate silently).

[MrGRiM]

I couldn't reproduce that initially. I even already had the latest version of Paint Shop Pro installed already, too. I pressed Control-Shift-Enter over PowerShell and it indeed gives me the UAC prompt to open it raised, and it does open. However, now when I do it, I get the attached screenshot. After I press "Cancel", then a UAC prompt for PowerShell opens. Everything behaves normally from then on other than the PSP debugging prompt each time I do the same thing after that. BTW, while the PSP Debug prompt is open, things behave sluggishly or seem to freeze until I Cancel that prompt.

Running v1.3.3 under Windows 8 Enterprise x64 at the moment.

I'm not sure if you guys had Windows 7 or not but if you do the same thing on Windows 7 Explorer crashes, so maybe this is an inherent problem from Windows 7.

[Tihiy]

This is a bug in PaintShop Pro shell extension which manifests on Windows 7 as well.

To fix this, delete [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Corel PaintShop Pro X5]

[roirraWedorehT]

Thanks for posting the solution so fast! I figured it was PSP's fault.