I’ve been running into a problem that is just bugging the hell out of me. I have an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra and the driver for it has a control panel. I had it working fine for a couple months, but recently the control panel window will just not appear. I’ll try to explain this as thoroughly as I can because I’m not sure if it is a problem with the software or with Vista (or something I did), and maybe someone can help me with it.
There are various ways I can open up the control panel (icon in system tray, icon in Windows Control Panel, etc.) but any way I do it the same thing always happens. It appears in the task bar as an open program. I can right click on the tab in the taskbar and alternately “Restore” and “Minimize” the window, but I never see the window itself on my screen. I can choose “Move” even, but I can’t do anything because when I click to move it I am obviously not clicking on the window, so the move action fails.
Vista has a preview of the window when you hover the mouse over the taskbar tab of the program, and the preview looks like the control panel, but partially painted (at least I think that’s what it looks like, it’s all black but with what looks like a button from the control panel, like it’s only painting the active button from the panel.)
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver and nothing changed. It’s probably something I should take up with the company, but I’m curious if any Vista wizards out there could help me come up with a work around or some idea of what is going on. Could the window be somehow off screen, and it just defaults spawning off screen so I never see it? Is there some way to force it to spawn at certain coordinates, to force it come onscreen?
I’d really like to get this working soon, and any help would be appreciated. Of course if there’s any questions you need answered first, I’m happy to oblige.
Yep - it’s possible for an app to record the starting co-ordinates, and for those co-ordinates to be off-screen. I’ve seen it happen before. I avoid Vista, but there may be a Tile Windows option that will bring the window back on screen.
Your only other option is to try to find where the screen position data is stored. It should be in the registry, under something like HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\M-Audio. But it may be hard to fine, as it could be under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Or it could be in an INI file. Call M-Audio support.
It’s possible to move around a window you can’t see. Right click and select “Move” as you tried before, but don’t do anything else with your mouse. Use the arrow keys. It may take a bit since you are moving blind and don’t know where it is relative to your screen but the window will move in the direction of the arrow you are pressing and you should be able to navigate it back into the visible part of your screen.
The Tile Windows option didn’t do anything, but tanstaafl’s suggestion did the trick, just in a weird way. I used the arrow keys, trying to move the window around for a while, but gave up when nothing happened. Then when I moved the mouse the window outline appeared by the cursor, I clicked and it appeared.