Operation difference between Version 10 and Version 11

unclejoe · Post by **unclejoe** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:41 am

First a little background. I am running XP home SP3. I have a number of Macro Scheduler macros that I use. Some run on start up others by Hot Key or time of day. I wrote a new never ending macro which presents a dialog; processes the input and redisplays the dialog. While I was running Version 10, I ran two copies of Macro Scheduler. One copy without any parameters. The other copy was passed the "dialog" macro name as a command line parameter. The rationale being the second copy was busy because its macro never terminated, and the first copy would run all the rest of my macros. It seemed to work well.

When I switched to Version 11, I noticed that sometimes the startup macros did not execute in the first copy, but seemed to be waiting to start in the dialog copy. When I terminated the dialog macro, then the start up macro would run.

Question 1: if there are two copies of msched running, which one will pick up hot keys?

Question 2: Will a never ending macro "tie up" its copy of msched?

Question 3: Do I really need to run two copies of msched?

Question 4: Have I stumbled on a bug?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated? Thanks in advance!

Post by **Marcus Tettmar** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 8:41 am

Question 1: if there are two copies of msched running, which one will pick up hot keys?

The one that started first.

Question 2: Will a never ending macro "tie up" its copy of msched?

Depends what it is doing. Personally I'd run a never ending macro outside of Macro Scheduler, either as a compiled .exe or by running it on the command line (e.g. msched.exe macroname.scp - see help file for command line options)

Question 3: Do I really need to run two copies of msched?

No, see above.

Question 4: Have I stumbled on a bug?

I don't think so.

bnc1 · Post by **bnc1** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 10:48 am

Perhaps you have stumbled on a bug

I have had intermittent problems with Macro Scheduler 11 where the main Macro Scheduler task does not show up in the systray area (even though there is an msched.exe process listed in task manager). This occasionally occurs after a boot. See this link : http://www.mjtnet.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4854

I have also seen similar behavior when invoking a macro via the command line option msched.exe macroname.scp . Again on occasion, the macro does not start , (log option is on but no log is created), but there is a copy of msched.exe in task manager that usually disappears when the macro ends. Again, all of this behavior is very intermittent, and I dont recall it ever happening with MS v10 ?? A few weeks ago, the problem was happening often enough that I opened a support ticket. Marcus found a some interesting links that talked about Windows problems with systray icons not appearing :

http://winhlp.com/node/16

"Some Windows XP installations show a peculiar defect in that some systray icons disappear or, rather, do not appear, when the system is booted and the user logs on."

How To: Fix Missing System Tray Icons at Windows XP startup
http://www.tech-pro.net/howto_013.html

These refer to Windows XP, but, you never know, could be a similar issue in Vista.

More Vista related:
http://smokeys.wordpress.com/2008/07/05 ... quick-fix/

Since I have a Vista SP1 x64 system, I tried the registry patch suggested in the last link above. It seemed to solve my problems for a few days, but eventually it reoccured. I have tried several different things to prevent this problem from happening without any permanent success. I have a fairly powerful Intel quadcore QX6700 system with 4gb of RAM. I tried disabling my security software (Avast) and even did a fresh install of Vista. The problem keeps coming back

jpuziano · Post by **jpuziano** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:08 pm

Hi bnc1,

Thanks for posting about your issues on this and for posting those links. One of them refers to a known bug in the Windows function Shell_NotifyIcon in Shell32.dll.

Can anyone produce a list of steps that will reproduce the problem reliably?

Marcus, have you found anything further? Do you think that DLL is the problem? Hopefully Microsoft will eventually fix it.

On the other hand, if that DLL is to blame, why would the problem occur only with Macro Scheduler 11 and not 10? Does 11 use that DLL while 10 somehow does not?

In any case, thanks again unclejoe and bnc1 for the info.

bnc1 · Post by **bnc1** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:40 pm

You are welcome JPuziano

After some more thought I realized that my issues are clearly not specific to Macro Scheduler 11. Looking at the link I posted in my previous message :

http://www.mjtnet.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4854

posted on July 2008, MS 11 was not yet available

unclejoe · Post by **unclejoe** » Sat Apr 25, 2009 2:07 am

Thanks for posting JPuziano and Bnc1.
It's interesting that I have the same disappearing Systray icons problem.
I had come across a fix in Kelly's Corner. However, it was a temporary fix for the current boot. In subsequent boots, the problem returned. In my case it was independent of Msched versions. I will look into the Shell32.dll patch solution.

unclejoe · Post by **unclejoe** » Sat Apr 25, 2009 2:15 am

Marcus thanks for answering my questions. I do run my never ending macro from the command line. Actually, I use the shortcut to the macro that Msched created.

One more Question if I may. When the Run Immediate Anyway is selected in the Advanced Run When options, what order do the macros run? Is it in the order of the Time at setting?