Unusual Form Behavior

[holzert]

I have a process that a user goes through maybe 30 times a day. The steps are always the same. During the process the sequence goes through 4-5 forms being displayed and allowing keyboard entry before a report prints from each form. This happens at literally hundreds of locations with no problems and no issues. However, on all of the machines at one single location a strange thing happens. When the user goes to a form and the form displays, all of the fields will be accessible but the cursor dissappears. Clicking in any field on the form the user can type but the cursor is not visible. The strangest thing is that no matter what key the user presses on the keyboard, the
(ctrl+F1) key is the result (a 'y' with the two umlauts on top of it) in all fields. Now, the titlebar of the form itself actually appears disabled, but the form is not disabled.

**The REALLY strange this is that when the form initially displays and appears deactivated for some reason, if the user presses the windows key on the keyboard (which activates the startmenu in windows) and then clicks with the mouse on the titlebar of the form in Visual FoxPro, everything returns to normal and the titlebar is now dark, the keys work correctly in all fields, and the cursor is active. Once this problem occurs, it happens everytime until I delete the resource file and restart our app (or so it appears).

All of the systems are new systems.
Windows XP.
6 workstations.

I have checked the power settings, desktop themes, resource files, other Visual FoxPro apps and their files, replaced the keyboard, etc. It will only happen at this site and then it is reproduced nonstop.

Any ideas? Why does switching tasks to/from windows startmenu fix it? The form is the same form that has run for years (and called in the same sequence) by hundreds of users.

Not using a resource file does not resolve this error.

Thanks in advance

 

[mspratt]

Is there anti-virus running there that is different from other sites? Is there a setting that can exclude VFP files?

Regards,

Mike

 

[holzert]

It is Norton AntiVirus and I excluded the entire directory structure for testing purposes. Sorry, I should have mentioned that previously.

 

[mspratt]

Does pressing both windows keys at the same time twice clear up the problem? Are all of your motherboards the same model?

 

[holzert]

That works temporarily. Then after 4-5 times of running the form (it is a simple receipt entry form) it starts happening again. What does pressing both windows keys simultaneously do exactly? How is that different than pressing one of the windows keys?

 

[mspratt]

I had a user that while in Wordperfect or some other random program, while typing, all of a sudden she would be popped back to the desktop with explorer windows, find windows, run windows popping up. What windows she got depended on what keys she had actually typed. It acted like a windows key was stuck down and typing the appropriate hotkey brought up a window. We found that pressing both windows keys once brought up the start menu and pressing them both again took you back to where you were and stopped the behavior.

Eventually I found out that the culprit was the keyboard decoder on the motherboard. It was being used to full capacity and then a 800 pound gorilla from Redmond decided it wanted Windows keys. The fact that they kludged around the problem rather than redesign the IC was the problem on some motherboards.

Bring in a different PC with a different motherboard and see if it has the problem when all the other computers have the problem.

Good Luck!

Regards,

Mike

 

[holzert]

It's worth a try. Thanks Mike!

 

[StewartUK]

holzert,

I noticed that you mentioned that you "delete the resource file".

Do you actually need this for your app? The resource file can quite often be the source of odd behaviours. In the config.fpw file, I have SET RESOURCE = OFF to prevent VFP from trying to use a resource file.


Hope that helps,

Stewart
PS If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.