[Win7 bug] PM and W7 taskbar don't seem to get along.

[26F36DD]

I have noticed that when I have more than a few items open the taskbar often times doesn't want to switch tasks only for PM. Other programs switch all the time but something is blocking PM. I don't know if this is even a PM bug at all or a W7 taskbar bug. Has anybody else had this issue?

[megaman]

I am having a little bit of trouble understanding what you are saying.

[26F36DD]

When I use the taskbar to switch tasks it doesn't want to switch PM- but it will switch other programs. It seems to fail if I have more than a few items open.

[Moonchild]

Can you please explain exactly what you are trying to do, step by step, and indicate what exactly fails for Pale Moon that works for other programs?

[26F36DD]

The way I use the computer is I tend to have a bunch of things running at the same time such as PM, email, documents, other programs... Then when I want to switch from one item to another I click on the taskbar and it brings the new item up and hides the others.

What I keep seeing is if I have more than a few things going it wont switch to PM. Then the only way it seems to want to switch to PM is if everything else is minimized and then it can pull up PM. Every other program will switch no matter how many other things I have going so it looks like these 2 somewhere somehow don't like each other.

[Moonchild]

That's odd, as it's a normal task switch and Pale Moon doesn't do anything different than other windows applications.
Note that "hiding other applications" is not standard windows behavior for a task bar click (it will just bring the clicked application to the foreground), so are you using any non-standard task switcher in your Windows? Any sort of shell enhancement or replacement?

[26F36DD]

Minimalizing would be a better way of saying it. Also if it helps I generally run everything maximalized. That is why I say things switch.

I do now run ObjectDock Plus but the bug has been going on long before I started running it and it switches everything perfectly. It seems that the problem is confined to the W7 taskbar.

[megaman]

Minimalizing would be a better way of saying it. Also if it helps I generally run everything maximalized. That is why I say things switch.

I do now run ObjectDock Plus but the bug has been going on long before I started running it and it switches everything perfectly. It seems that the problem is confined to the W7 taskbar.

Yet, we cannot reproduce this issue, certainly there must be something in your PC that is denying this ability.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I agree I cannot reproduce this and the superbar is functioning properly on W7 and W8.

[26F36DD]

Thanks, but I was kinda already there. Does anybody have anything useful like some known conflicts or something like that? It seems to me that what I am reading could be read as fancy talk for we have got nothing.

[megaman]

Thanks, but I was kinda already there. Does anybody have anything useful like some known conflicts or something like that? It seems to me that what I am reading could be read as fancy talk for we have got nothing.

Registry error, antivirus detecting a suspicious activity and blocking the Taskbar ability (Whitelist/Exclude Palemoon from the paranoid antivirus), Corruption in the installation so a reinstall, restart the computer to see if it happens again. Man, can't think while sleepy, but things to try at least.

[26F36DD]

Thanks. I will see if any of those pan out. Get some rest!

[alan9182]

Why not launch Windows Task Manager and select the "Processors" tab and click on the CPU header.

You might find that the Palemoon.exe and/or Plugin-Container.exe process is using up all CPU cycles of one or more processor cores, yet getting nowhere.
You might find that the Palemoon etc. processes are being starved of CPU cycles due to whatever.

Whatever you find, you may obtain useful information.

[26F36DD]

I went there and it was hardly taking up anything. The only thing that took anything up at all is PM if I have a bunch of pages open. The only thing that I have noticed is Adobe Crash constantly is failing but the taskbar bug has been there for as long as I can remember.

[Night Wing]

I have two desktop tower computers. Each desktop computer has two hard drives in them.

The first desktop hard drive runs Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit and the other hard drive has Linux Mint 14, 64-bit. The second desktop hard drive runs Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit and the second hard drive in it also runs Linux Mint 14, 64-bit.

On each of the Windows 7 hard drives, both have Avast free anti-virus, Comodo free firewall and the newest versions of Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader and Java installed. I can not reproduce your error in both desktop computers.

As an experiment, I have also installed Pale Moon to run under Wine in Linux Mint (with no problems) on both desktop computers, but without any anti-virus installed.

I can not reproduce your Pale Moon taskbar problems running in the Linux Mint taskbar either so I'm thinking there is something specific on your computer which is causing the problem with Pale Moon.

[alan9182]

I now have a 4 core processor Desktop,
and one of the 4 cores has 100% of its CPU cycles fully occupied when updating my AV signature database,
but at the same time I can be browsing with Palemoon and download and installing software without any delays because the other 3 cores are available

When I had a single core processor Laptop then EVERYTHING froze during the AV update.

Is it possible that an Adobe pre-crash hang-up is stealing all the CPU cycles of the single core which Palemoon / Plug-in-Container is using ?

[26F36DD]

What I am seeing is when it crashes it usually doesn't hang. I didn't realize just how many pages were using Crash until the last update but what I see is the Crash parts of the pages like videos just die out. I can reload the page(s) and then they work again. It seems that the more pages open the more it does it- when before that last update it didn't.

As far as the AV this computer has Avira. But the taskbar issue was before that was on here.

[ninaholic]

When the taskbar doesn't work, can you switch back to Palemoon using Alt-Tab?

I've had what you described before, where I can't click on a browser or program in taskbar, and have to minimize everything else to get to it. It hasn't happened to me for a while though, seems like just a strange minimize/maximize set-to-foreground Windows environment bug of some kind.

Here's a few more people describing the same behavior:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk ... kbar-icons
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-disc ... front.html
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 71896cb351

[megaman]

When the taskbar doesn't work, can you switch back to Palemoon using Alt-Tab?

Yes, I almost always use ALT+TAB and I highly recommended, yet I didn't advice it because I wanted to stay relevant to the OP's problem.

[ninaholic]

Yes, I almost always use ALT+TAB and I highly recommended, yet I didn't advice it because I wanted to stay relevant to the OP's problem.

Heh, ok. I guess I saw it as relevant for two reasons:

- I never really use Alt-Tab, but in this case, if it still works, it would be faster than minimizing every other window to get to the "unresponsive" one
- If Alt-Tab still works or not (when a taskbar button doesn't) could help narrow down the "scope" of the problem

Interestingly, I actually got the chance to experience the problem today when having 6 or so windows open (one wouldn't focus to the foreground when I clicked on it in taskbar) so instead of minimizing all the others, I tried to Alt-Tab to it, and the result? It worked! So the issue seemed to be strictly related to the taskbar, and not to the program being completely unresponsive or in some kind of "I think I'm in the foreground but I'm really not" or "I'm busy" or "I'm confused about how to become active again" state (at least in my case). So I guess Alt-Tab could be a "time saver" in this situation.

I sort of remember what I opened and in what order too. I'll try to reproduce it, maybe I can do it on any W7 system...