Windower 4 fails to launch. Blank white box.

[DavionCA]

Description: Windows 4 (fresh install) fails to load beyond a white, tall, narrow box. Initial "Windower 4" banner appears, then is replaced with the blank box. Common button locations (Close in top-right corner) seem to work.

OS: Windows 8 Enterprise x64

Windower Version: 4

Plug-ins/addons/other: Only what comes with the installer.

Settings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<settings>
<profile name="">
<consolekey>Insert</consolekey>
<uiscale>1</uiscale>
</profile>
</settings>

Details of how the issue happened: This is after initial install of Windower 4. Windower 3 runs without issue. Tried turning things off (UAC, firewall, etc.) and used various Compatibility Mode options (7, XP SP3/2, etc.) with no difference. Launching with "Run as Administrator", but no difference. Hook.dll appears to be downloading upon launch. System has 2 GFX systems (Intel and Nvidia), tried forcing it to run on either with no change in results.

System is a Dell XPS L702X.

[Ihellmasker]

Is is the launcher or the game that isn't working?

[DavionCA]

This is the launcher. I don't get far enough to attempt to launch the game. The sequence of events is:

1. Launch Windower 4 from desktop shortcut
2. UAC pop-up > Allow run as Admin
3. Windower 4 banner appears, then disappears
4. Tall, narrow white box appears. Task bar Icon is the Windower 4 icon.

Interestingly enough I can click the upper-right corner where the close "X" would normally be and it will close.The window can also be dragged and minimized.

I left it open for quite some time (10+ minutes) just in case it needed to download something more, but no change.

[semuer]

same situation here
Windows8 x64 Pro

[alphaONE2]

This is not possible to fix at this time. It appears to be a bug in WPF itself, and I cannot reproduce the issue to attempt a work around.

[DavionCA]

Is there anything that I can provide on my end to help debug this? Maybe if you can point me in the direction of the bug in WPF (KB #, etc.) I can work to try to figure something out. Would hate to just close this without attempting some kind of a fix.

[alphaONE2]

I have only been able to find a few references to similar issues with other WPF applications on google, and no work arounds or details about the cause of the problem.

The only thing I can think of specifically would be a conflict with your GPU, you might try disabling the WPF hardware renderer, but I'm not sure if that will help at all.

[DavionCA]

That did it. I disabled hardware rendering for WPF via registry key. I had to add the key HK_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics then add a DWORD (32-bit) entry with a value of 1.

I am testing now to see if that is going to cause problems with anything else, but so far that allowed Windower to launch, downloaded addons and plug-ins, and launch the XI client. I'll report in with further testing results.

[DavionCA]

So it looks like disabling HW acceleration is playing hell with Chrome, or it's just a coincidence. The game itself seems to be running smooth enough, but I don't know if that is using WPF at all so I'm not sure if the registry setting has any bearing on it at all.

[AngelAeryi]

i figured out a quick fix that works for me

right click windower icon > properties > compatibility tab > check disable desktop composition

this just causes your desktop to switch to windows basic so if thats not a problem for you when windower is running then go for it.

and im running windows 7 so not sure if this fixes those running windows 8 or not

[nytesong]

I'm on windows 8 x64, and after reading the above comment about a windows 7 setting for compatability>desktop composition, i decided to see if changing my theme in windows 8 to a more simple one that dont have all the nice changing images that look great. well i can now see the windower menu and its not just a white box!

additional info: i use a asus g46vw laptop and chose the basic installed asus theme.

i hope this helps anyone wandering this way.

[sinni800]

I had this problem again now and doing DisableHWAcceleration (Registry) certainly works.

Windower will also probably never need any hardware acceleration, so why not disable it for windower at all?

in OnSourceInitialized

You can do this on your window:

` var hwndSource = PresentationSource.FromVisual(this) as HwndSource;

    if (hwndSource != null)
        hwndSource.CompositionTarget.RenderMode = RenderMode.SoftwareOnly;`

Because you use Github but don't actually open source I can't show you where to put it. Heh.

[alphaONE2]

Yes, I'm aware of the RenderMode property. I did consider doing this long ago but it never happened for multiple reasons. Another solution is to set the Window background to Transparent and nest a UI element with an opaque background; this keeps HW acceleration, but turns off ClearType. You can partially turn ClearType back on on a case-by-case basis using RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint, but you have to sprinkle it all over the XAML.

The entire problem ultimately results from a trick used to enable the DWM drop shadow for a window with WindowStyle="None". On some GPUs the window render target's alpha channel is garbage unless you explicitly force WPF to clear to transparent, and this messes up the DWM compositing.

Ultimately I decided to use a completely different method in Windower 5. The new method has the benefit of also restoring the minimize/restore animations and sidesteps the entire problem with the alpha channel, but I don't really want to back port the code to Windower 4.

If you really want to get this fixed in Windower 4, you might be able to talk @z16 into changing the RenderMode.

[z16]

If you really want to get this fixed in Windower 4, you might be able to talk @z16 into changing the RenderMode.

You may not. I dread doing anything for v4 at this point, and with Windower 5 approaching some state of maturity I don't feel it's worth the effort.

[sinni800]

Well I would fork it if it was open source and put it in myself for now.