ObjectDock Plus crashing
Thursday, September 22, 2005 by jlluck | Discussion: ObjectDock
I'm using ObjectDock plus. I've set up the dock without tabs at the bottom of my scree, moved the taskbar to top and told OD to hide it. I'm running WinXP Pro with 2gig ram, 2.4ghz P4 and a dual monitors. I do mostly graphic software (Adobe suite). It seems when the onscreen redraw gets intense or if I wake the monitors from sleep, the OD crashes and I have to hit the Windows key and click OD to re-launch it. This happens quite a bit. I love the dock but it just doesn't seem stable and crashes on me several times a day.
Any suggestions on what I can do?
thanks!
Any suggestions on what I can do?
thanks!
jlluck
Reply #2 Thursday, September 22, 2005 7:32 AM
Reply #2 Thursday, September 22, 2005 7:32 AM
Thanks for the reply.
I'll disable the sleep. But not sure that'll help either. I have an unusual set up but enough power to run it. I do graphics and thus run two 21" CRT monitors with a 64mb dual video card (not like an off the shelf card, more what AutoCAD folks would use).
I'm running the dock you can create without tabs. Not a big fan or user of the tab part and was hooked with the free OD interface. But I do have the mouse over zoom activated and the action on an icon is the default glow.
I still like OD and will hang in there for the next release. I was just wondering if anyone else had encountered this cause I couldn't find a post about it.
I'll disable the sleep. But not sure that'll help either. I have an unusual set up but enough power to run it. I do graphics and thus run two 21" CRT monitors with a 64mb dual video card (not like an off the shelf card, more what AutoCAD folks would use).
I'm running the dock you can create without tabs. Not a big fan or user of the tab part and was hooked with the free OD interface. But I do have the mouse over zoom activated and the action on an icon is the default glow.
I still like OD and will hang in there for the next release. I was just wondering if anyone else had encountered this cause I couldn't find a post about it.
Corky_O
Reply #3 Thursday, September 22, 2005 9:18 AM
Reply #3 Thursday, September 22, 2005 9:18 AM
No problem. 
I run ObjectDock Plus, with a normal (non-tabbed) dock on top, and a tabbed dock that hides behind taskbar at bottom center.
I have run this set-up for quite some time, and had a motherboard with onboard graphics (64 MB shared), then installed a PCI 128 MB video card by ATI (the motherboard did not have an AGP slot).
There was a noticable slow down in my graphics perfomance with the limited video resources of both the onboard and PCI card when using the normal dock and magification.
I recently swapped out the motherboard for an ASUS with an AGP slot, installed the same CPU and drives, and installed an ATI X700 Pro 256 MB AGP video card.
There is no longer any issue with running a normal dock and my other programs - notably: Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10, Poser 5, Painter IX, Bryce 5.5, and CorelDRAW 12.
The card really makes a difference.
Chopsxxx
Reply #4 Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:17 PM
Reply #4 Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:17 PM
Almost all my problems with crashing came from having the tray somewhere on a dock. Either as the docklet provided by a 3rd party developer (availablie on this site) or as a tab on a dock. I made the tray its own tabbed dock hidden at the side of my screen and disabled animations on that dock. I now have two single magnifiers, and 2 tabbed docks including the tray. No crashes. All are hidden and have animation (except the tray).
Lantec
Reply #5 Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:40 PM
Reply #5 Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:40 PM
Mr jlluck,
If you have the systray on a dock with any other items as mentioned above you will have a performance hit. I agree with Chopxxx that it's best on it's own "standard" dock without autohide or magnification.
The dual 21" monitors would have to be running at 1280 or below with only 64mb of video memory and that would still stretch the resource. I run 128mb on a new ATI Mobility Radeon X600 PCIE with a 21" LCD at 1600x1200 and the laptops widescreen at 1920x1200 both at 32 bit color and I often get "not enough memory for that operation" messages from the video. Certain intense screen savers (OpenGL especially) will tax the resource to it's limits and any running programs (I use AutoCAD 2006) which use large amounts of video memory or have multiple open windows will often crash or hang when the computer "wakes up". You might want to try reducing your resolution and/or color quality and see if it makes a difference.
If you have the systray on a dock with any other items as mentioned above you will have a performance hit. I agree with Chopxxx that it's best on it's own "standard" dock without autohide or magnification.
The dual 21" monitors would have to be running at 1280 or below with only 64mb of video memory and that would still stretch the resource. I run 128mb on a new ATI Mobility Radeon X600 PCIE with a 21" LCD at 1600x1200 and the laptops widescreen at 1920x1200 both at 32 bit color and I often get "not enough memory for that operation" messages from the video. Certain intense screen savers (OpenGL especially) will tax the resource to it's limits and any running programs (I use AutoCAD 2006) which use large amounts of video memory or have multiple open windows will often crash or hang when the computer "wakes up". You might want to try reducing your resolution and/or color quality and see if it makes a difference.
jlluck
Reply #6 Thursday, September 22, 2005 5:48 PM
Reply #6 Thursday, September 22, 2005 5:48 PM
Ahhh, you guys are awsome!
I am running the ObjectDock Tray docklet and it does drop icons during the day.
I will put it in another dock off to the side and disable the mouse over animation and try that. Is there anything better to view your sys tray with? I go to it a couple of times a day and I gotta see when I get email. I mostly access Extensis Suitecase and Konfabulator but the tray tells me when Outlook gets mail.
thanks again to a super group of people!
I am running the ObjectDock Tray docklet and it does drop icons during the day.
I will put it in another dock off to the side and disable the mouse over animation and try that. Is there anything better to view your sys tray with? I go to it a couple of times a day and I gotta see when I get email. I mostly access Extensis Suitecase and Konfabulator but the tray tells me when Outlook gets mail.
thanks again to a super group of people!
Chris TH
Reply #7 Thursday, September 22, 2005 7:30 PM
Reply #7 Thursday, September 22, 2005 7:30 PM
Just to cover all bases 
another source of OD crashing is bad-behaving docklets.
If you've got no docklets then the other reasons given above are more to the point.
another source of OD crashing is bad-behaving docklets. If you've got no docklets then the other reasons given above are more to the point.
jlluck
Reply #8 Friday, September 23, 2005 9:39 PM
Reply #8 Friday, September 23, 2005 9:39 PM
Just to let you all know, I think problem solved.
I did as Chopsxxx recommended and created another dock and just showed task bar items without any mouse over animations. I was able to run all day (and last night) without OD crashing once. And I think it's even moving smoother.
thanks!
I did as Chopsxxx recommended and created another dock and just showed task bar items without any mouse over animations. I was able to run all day (and last night) without OD crashing once. And I think it's even moving smoother.
thanks!
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Reply #1 Thursday, September 22, 2005 7:23 AM
Not sure what is going on there.
You could try to deselect the "Tabs always on top" and "Mouse activation" to prevent a resource conflict on screen.
I believe I have seen a post about an issue with ObjectDock and the wake from sleep function not working well together (though I cannot remember what the name of the post - it was a while ago).
A normal test would be to deselect the items mentioned above, and disable the sleep and hibernate functions during test period, and then if all works well - reactivate the sleep function to test that.
ObjectDock animation (mouse activation, and magnifications) performance while running other applications will vary depending on the video card more than the processor and amount of RAM - within reason.
Sort of similar to game performance in the video cards, but not as extensive.