LaunchBar Commander on Windows 7 x64?

[J-Mac]

LaunchBar Commander runs fine on my current computer, a Windows 7 x64 running Windows Professional - for the most part. However occasionally, usually upon Windows shutdown and most often after installing an update for LBC, an error dialog pops up. Actually it pops up many times! I can't tell how many because the computer is in the process of shutting down so I have no control of my mouse and very little control of my keyboard when it occurs. But the error dialog - attached below - first appears at mid-screen and the keeps replicating, each one a little lower and to the right. This massive trail of error dialog boxes continues down to the lower right corner of my monitor and once it reaches there it just keeps piling one on top of the previous... until Windows finally decides to shut down anyway!

It all happens so damn fast that I haven't been able to snap a photo of it, though I have tried. Believe it or not I got my digital camera out, sat it next to my keyboard, and waited for it to happen again, hoping to get a photo of the screen the next time it happened. Of course like that fabled "watched pot" it just would not do it again as long as my camera and I were ready!! Naturally as soon as the camera was moved elsewhere the damn error popped again - I think it was sticking its tongue out at me! Evil thing!

It appears that the cause it a line of code (am I saying that right, as a total non-programmer-type?) that refers to an installation location of C:\Program Files\, when, as a 32-bit program it is always installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\. Windows sees that line and since it can't find LBC there I guess it gets a little annoyed. And so it decides to see if it can annoy me in turn. And obviously succeeds!

Anyway, here's the error dialog:

[attachimg=#1]

Thanks for any help with this!

Jim

[mouser]

On Windows 7, LBC should not be trying to save anything to its Program Files directory.. The only time that should happen is if you edited the ConfigDir.ini file to try to make it portable, or if you moved the files from a WinXp machine maybe.

Can you check for that? If you are purposefully storing your dock data file in the LBC program files directory, you need to not do that.

[J-Mac]

mouser, I'll take a look again to see where everything is, but I have set anything up at all. Everything is exactly where it was installed. I created my dock about two years ago and have never changed the .ini file nor moved anything.

Now two years ago I believe that I would have had XP installed. I started using Windows 7  - looks like I purchased the family pack in Nov 2009, so I guess it has been Windows 7 for about three years. I see that my first dock was created sometime earlier in 2009, so my original installation would have been on XP. Now as to how I got that onto Windows 7, I can't remember.

What is it I need to look for and fix/edit?

Thanks!

Jim

[mouser]

load up your dock as normal, then go to config, and do a File -> Save File As
and then save your dock file someplace under your documents directory.

[J-Mac]

OK, my LBC files all seem to be located at D:\Documents\DonationCoder\LaunchBarCommander\

That folder contains an .ini, .mcp, .mcf, and .bak files. However while there were several old backup (.bak) files in the Documents directory, most of the backups for my dock are in the Program Files directory, which is exactly where you posted that LBC should not be trying to save files.

Unfortunately I can't find any information regarding where to save what. Also, no place I can find in Options to designate file locations. Looks like the .ini file could do it but I don’t understand all of the coding there. For example, the Form Placement line doesn’t mean anything to me. Surely there is a better way to designate file locations!

Here are the contents of my LaunchBarCommander.ini file:

[Global]
LastDefaultImageDirectory=
LastDefaultImageDllDirectory="C:\Users\Jim\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\bin\Dropbox.exe"
LastProjectFileName="D:\Documents\DonationCoder\LaunchbarCommander\LaunchBarCommander.mcp"

[Treeform.MainProperties]
acSplitterPanelMain.SplitterPos=450
CheckBoxRemind.Checked="false"
EditLastVersion.Text="1.133.01"
FormPlacement="0,1,-1,-1,-1,-1,619,123,1401,867"
TBXMRUList.Items=text:"C:\Program Files (x86)\LaunchBarCommander\Jims Main Dock.mcf$0D$0A"
TBXToolbar1.CurrentDock="TBXDockMain"
TBXToolbar1.DockPos=-1
TBXToolbar1.DockRow=0
TBXToolbarMain.CurrentDock="TBXDockMain"
TBXToolbarMain.DockPos=-1
TBXToolbarMain.DockRow=0

Maybe you can make sense of it.

Thank you.

Jim

[mouser]

If you open up your LBC options, on the left you should see a node labeled "FILE [NAME OF YOUR FILE]".
Select that, then choose File -> Save File As from the menu.
See where that is trying to save your file.
If it's not saving it in D:\Documents\DonationCoder\LaunchbarCommander\, then change to that directory and save it there.
Then exit LBC and restart.
And then let me know if you see that error about failure to save file again.

The error you posted clearly showed it was trying to save a dock file of a different name in your Program Files directory:


So the thing you need to make sure is that it's not still loading that old file in your Program Files directory, or if it is, that you do a Save As to move it to the new D:\Documents directory.

So what I'm trying to walk you through is making sure you aren't still working with that dock file, and that you save a new version of it in your Documents folder if you want to continue using it.

NOTE: If you have multiple *FILE* nodes on the left hand side of your options, make sure to do the same with each.

[J-Mac]

Wow!  OK, here's how it went so far:

I clicked File>Save As and sure enough it was trying to save to the Program Files directory. So I changed it to the D:\Documents\DonationCoder\LaunchBarCommander\ directory. Before exiting I checked both the C:\Program Files\LaunchBarCommander\ and D:\Documents\LaunchBarCommander\ directories and it was correctly saved to the latter (D:\Documents\LaunchBarCommander\).

However when I clicked File>Exit anotherd error dialog started replicating itself. Screenshot attached.

[attachthumb=#1]

So now I must exit every damn one of those - or reboot the computer!

I almost hate starting LBC up and trying this again!

Thanks!

Jim

[mouser]

So now I must exit every damn one of those - or reboot the computer!

No, just hit ctrl+alt+delete to show the Task Manager, find LaunchbarCommander.exe, and terminate it.


I apologize for the problems that the program is causing you -- hopefully you are the test pilot who will eventually help me find the bug and fix it for future users.

[mouser]

Can you send me (or post) a screenshot of your configuration tree window.

When you get that error now, you didnt say whether it was still first complaining about not saving
"C:\Program FIles\LaunchbarCommander\Jims Main Dock-02_bak_121130_0959.mcf"

I need to make sure we are talking about the same problem.

If it is still complaining about that file, how about exiting LBC and deleting that file (C:\Program FIles\LaunchbarCommander\Jims Main Dock-02_bak_121130_0959.mcf) -- since it seems that its still loading that file.

Also can you delete any configdir.ini and configdir_default.ini file that is in your C:\ProgramFiles\LaunchbarCommander directory.

[J-Mac]

No problem. Believe it or not, I started clicking the OK button on the box at the bottommost right and then since the OK button remained highlighted I just held down the Enter button and they all closed within a second! Stupid but somewhat effective.  

I restarted LBC and then clicked File>Exit once more and it closed without a whimper this time. Another thing I remember that was odd: A few days ago - I think it was right after my first post in this thread - I deleted a couple of docks that I had not actively created. Both were named "MyFirstLaunchBar.mcf" and they had somehow inserted themselves on top of my real dock, something like this:

FILE:MyFirstLaunchBar.mcf
V
V
MyFirstLaunchBar.mcf
V
V
Jim's Main Dock.mcf
V
V
Followed by my nodes.

I'm not completely certain about whether or not the "FILE:" was only after the first entry or more, but I was looking through all my nodes for any reference to the incorrect Program Files location that was showing up in the earlier error boxes. I found that many of the icons were referencing the file locations from , I guess, XP when the Program Files directory held all the 32 bit programs. I was manually editing each node to insert the correct icon location. That was when I noticed the extraneous docks mentioned above. So I closed LBC, found and deleted those docks, and restarted. Looks correct now.

My concern is that I never created those other docks named "MyFirstLaunchBar.mcf". I believe that is the name of the sample dock that is created by default upon installation of LBC. Why would those have been injected into my dock's path? Any ideas?

Anyway, thanks for the help!

Jim

Oops - you posted again before me!

[J-Mac]

Hmm.. Looks like it is loading the correct file. Maybe I'm just not seeing it.

Here's the tree:

[attachthumb=#1]

Thanks!

Jim

[J-Mac]

Uhh, wrong! My dock, though saved to the Documents folder, is apparently still auto-saving and loading from the Program Files folder. Damn!

Jim

[J-Mac]

OK, I closed that file and opened the dock from the Documents folder, then re-saved it there again. Hopefully that does it.

Jim

[J-Mac]

Alright - I deleted all copies of the dock from the Program Files folder (after closing LBC) and then re-opened LBC and it opened from the correct folder now. Hopefully the auto-save function will keep it there!

Thanks!

Jim