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icon5.gif  Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Wed, 19 March 2014 17:14 Go to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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Hi,

I have a most irritating problem with Stars! when running it in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro.

When clicking on a "spinner" control to dial a setting up or down, such as factories operated in the race wizard or splitting fleets, Stars! nearly always react as if I am clicking multiple times or holding down the mouse button for an extended time, resulting in changing the setting more than one click.

At first I thought it was my mouse, as I was also sometimes seeing the PC reacting as a double-click when I was only trying to single click (a problem I have seen before with an older mouse), but replacing the mouse did not help.

Does anyone have any ideas for solving that problem ?

In case it matters, the mouse is actually a Logitech Wireless Trackball M570.



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Christian Ræbild / Christian Raebild

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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Wed, 19 March 2014 17:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
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Happens sometimes for me as well. Also Windows XP Mode. Win7 Enterprise. Wireless Logitech mouse. Does not happen on the desktop PC (wired Dell mouse), only on the laptop.

I solve the problem by clicking faster. Smile Also lots of cursing seems to help. It doesn't mitigate the problem, it just reduces my frustration level.

The problem doesn't last forever (for me). Seems to be sticky per waking session on the laptop. That is, it will start doing it after I wake the laptop from sleep state, and will keep doing it until the next time it sleeps.

You might be able to solve the problem with a scripting tool like AutoHotKey. Would be a right pain to set up, and I'm not 100% sure it would work, but you could map each control on the wizard to a hotkey combo that will send a single mouseclick to the OS (at the appropriate screen coordinates).




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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Wed, 19 March 2014 17:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
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Deleted double-post.

[Updated on: Wed, 19 March 2014 17:35]




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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Fri, 21 March 2014 17:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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skoormit wrote on Wed, 19 March 2014 22:33
Happens sometimes for me as well. Also Windows XP Mode. Win7 Enterprise. Wireless Logitech mouse. Does not happen on the desktop PC (wired Dell mouse), only on the laptop.

I solve the problem by clicking faster. Smile Also lots of cursing seems to help. It doesn't mitigate the problem, it just reduces my frustration level.

The problem doesn't last forever (for me). Seems to be sticky per waking session on the laptop. That is, it will start doing it after I wake the laptop from sleep state, and will keep doing it until the next time it sleeps.

You might be able to solve the problem with a scripting tool like AutoHotKey. Would be a right pain to set up, and I'm not 100% sure it would work, but you could map each control on the wizard to a hotkey combo that will send a single mouseclick to the OS (at the appropriate screen coordinates).


AutoHotKey seems like a lot of trouble.

skoormit, I jut tried something you might try, too.

In Windows XP Mode, go Device manager -> Mice and... .> Microsoft PS/2 Mouse -> Advanced Settings -> Sample Rate and set that to 200. That seems to have solved the problem for me, at least for the moment. Of course, you say the problem sometimes go away by itself, so it might be that I have seen. On the other hand, I haven't seen the problem go away by itself (unless that is what just happened), and it did go away when I set the Sample Rate to 200, so it looks like that is a good thing to try.

Edit: After having shut down the Virtual Machine and later restarted it the problem wasn't completely solved, so it seems luck does have some relevance, too. But half the time getting two clicks instead of one is better than nearly always getting 3-10 clicks on the spinner control. It is of course still not as good as getting the intended one click every time, but it is a better result.


[Updated on: Fri, 21 March 2014 19:50]




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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Fri, 21 March 2014 20:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
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Interesting. I'll give that a try the next time the problem occurs for me.

I usually just live with it. It's a minor annoyance for me. Not quite a nuisance. And it hasn't happened in a while.

Hmm...could it be related to the temperature of the computer? Seems like it happened more often when my laptop had been sleeping in the cold basement. It hasn't slept there in a while, and I haven't had the problem in a while. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Infallible.


[Updated on: Fri, 21 March 2014 20:54]




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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 23 March 2014 04:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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Shouldn't this thread be in the Bar? IIRC this forum's for strategy, not technical problems.

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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 23 March 2014 14:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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Maybe it should, I wasn't certain where the question belonged.


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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Wed, 26 March 2014 23:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
nmid

 
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I had this problem ages ago and I just set the
Control Panel > Mouse > Double Click Speed
to a slower speed.



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Thu, 27 March 2014 14:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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nmid wrote on Thu, 27 March 2014 04:09
I had this problem ages ago and I just set the
Control Panel > Mouse > Double Click Speed
to a slower speed.

That was the first thing I tried, and that didn't help.



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Fri, 28 March 2014 23:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
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nmid wrote on Wed, 26 March 2014 22:09
I had this problem ages ago and I just set the
Control Panel > Mouse > Double Click Speed
to a slower speed.


Sounds like a different problem. This isn't a double click. It's a single click that is being counted by Windows as a "held" click in about 0.1 seconds rather than the typical 0.5 seconds.



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sat, 29 March 2014 05:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
nmid

 
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Did a bit of research for you
-------------------

1. ok, the mouse works fine in non-xp mode?
1a. Is it a logitech mouse by any chance?

2. The drivers for the mouse are installed in xp?
2a. Boot the XP VM in safe mode and check if you have the same problem.

3. Try a different mouse, just to check if it's a hardware or a software problem.

----------------------------------
and... that autohotkey option that skoormit suggested...
http://superuser.com/questions/207731/configure-debounce-tim e-in-windows-for-mouse
http://jslover.secsrv.net/AutoHotkey/Scripts/Buggy-Mouse.ahk
Quote:
The free (and open source) tool AutoHotkey allows users to write custom scripts that interact with the keyboard and mouse. In particular, one user has written a script called "Buggy Mouse" which "sets your mouse's minimum double-click speed (preventing single-clicks from being seen as double-clicks)". It does this by ignoring multiple clicks that occur too close to each other.
After installing AutoHotkey and loading the script, my own debouncing issues appear to have been solved.
You may need to adjust the DoubleClick_Min parameter at the top of the script which determines the minimum amount of time between mouse events to be considered as two independent clicks: I found that the default value caused legitimate double-clicks to be considered a bounce. The value of 75 seems to work well for me, however.
----------------------------------
and... Couple of more quotes
http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Mice-and-Pointing-Devices/Mous e-Double-Clicks-when-I-only-Single-Click/td-p/243999/page/2
Re: Mouse Double Clicks when I only Single Click
DarekGrund
‎03-24-2011 06:49 PM
I had the same problem with my mouse. I was looking for possible solutions, but the only solution I found was this: buy new mouse. That's what everyone was saying.
It's hard to believe that this issue wasn't solved since 1964, when computer mouse was developed. Strange huh? What's even more strange, the solution is simple. I'm programmer and it took me only 6 hours to write program that fixes this issue. 6 hours to fix something that appearently couldn't be solved for 46 years?
Anyway, you can download the solution here: http://www.experienceit.pl/download - it was tested only on Windows Vista, so there's no guarantee that it will work on any other OS. This application was developed using C#, I can provide full source code so you can improve it. It works for me as it is, but there is always something that can be done better right?
Download this application here: http://www.experienceit.pl/download

----------------------------------
and... Someone also suggested
(2) Download Utility MouseFix version 1.0 http://www.mediafire.com/?2cr4157s0rtnm44
----------------------------------
and... kellysmith
I have tried resetting the mouse double click speed in control panel and updating driver, but nothing works in my case. i fixed mine by readjusting the spring which i found at http://www.uniquestuff.net/fixing_mouse_double_clicking... :love: Bounce
http://www.uniquestuff.net/fixing_mouse_double_clicking_on_s ingle_click.html
----------------------------------
and... On Lenovo computers, the hotkey feature of the ThinkVantage Password Manager may be the culprit! It resolved the problem on my Thinkpad X200:
http://blog.gfst.net/post/2009/12/22/Mouse-Not-Working-in-Of fice-2007-on-Lenovo-running-Windows-7-x64.aspx
...




I know my minefields.. but I'm a chaff sweeper.
I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.

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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sat, 29 March 2014 11:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
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nmid wrote on Sat, 29 March 2014 04:02
Did a bit of research for you
...


That...was awesome!



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sat, 29 March 2014 12:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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Lots of research, nmid, thank you for that Razz

Unfortunately no solution...

The problem is as skoormit surmised not double-clicking, but a held click that shouldn't be treated as a held click.

To go down you list:

1. The mouse works fine in non-XP mode. In fact it seems the problem only occurs in Stars!, but I haven't tried that many applications in XP mode.
1a. Logitech Wireless Trackball M570.

2. Yes
2a. I am not sure how to do that Confused

3. I tried replacing the mouse with a new mouse of the same model, as I was having double-click problems with all applications and both in XP mode and non-XP mode (problably a hardware problem), but that did not help with the problem in Stars!, though it helped in all other applications. I have a cabled Logitech mouse I could try, if the problem gets too irritating, but I would prefer to solve the problem without having to change to that cabled mouse.

I tried AutoHotkey and the Buggy-Mouse script, but that did not help - Probably because that script is intended to solve double-click issues, not held-click issues. It may be that AutoHotkey could solve the problem, but I would have to find out what variables to affect in the script, and working that out would probably take some time.



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sat, 29 March 2014 23:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
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craebild wrote on Sat, 29 March 2014 11:36

I tried AutoHotkey and the Buggy-Mouse script, but that did not help - Probably because that script is intended to solve double-click issues, not held-click issues. It may be that AutoHotkey could solve the problem, but I would have to find out what variables to affect in the script, and working that out would probably take some time.


I suspect that the AHK solution to this problem is far simpler than the script to correct double-click issues. However, I've done a few AHK scripts, and I know the learning curve is steep even for simple stuff.

It's just a matter of defining a keyboard shortcut that sends a single mouse click to the OS at the current mouse coordinates. In fact, it might be as simple as a single-line, single-word script, with the script itself linked to a hotkey combination. I'll take a look tomorrow and see if it is as simple as I suspect.



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 30 March 2014 05:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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skoormit wrote on Sun, 30 March 2014 05:17
I suspect that the AHK solution to this problem is far simpler than the script to correct double-click issues. However, I've done a few AHK scripts, and I know the learning curve is steep even for simple stuff.

It's just a matter of defining a keyboard shortcut that sends a single mouse click to the OS at the current mouse coordinates. In fact, it might be as simple as a single-line, single-word script, with the script itself linked to a hotkey combination. I'll take a look tomorrow and see if it is as simple as I suspect.

That would certainly be nice, then I would just have to find a key I won't be using for anything else while using XP mode.

I seem to remember from he AHK documentation that it can distinguish between the left and right Windows key, so I could use the right Windows key, as I always use the left Windows key when I need it as Windows key. Or I could use Scroll Lock, I haven't used that key outside boot applications since using PC's that booted in DOS.



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 30 March 2014 08:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
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Turns out it was as simple as I suspected.

Here is the script:

^!c::Click

Just copy that line into a text file (with no other content), and save it with some suitable name and a .ahk extension. Then load it with AHK (you'll need to download and install AHK first, of course) by double clicking it. After that, you can use ctrl-alt-c to send a mouse click. Point the mouse at a problematic slider, and instead of left-clicking, use the keyboard shortcut. I imagine this might take a bit of mental effort to retrain yourself to not click the mouse button.

If you want to change the keyboard assignment, just open the AHK help file and search for "Hotkey" and you'll find an article containing a list of hotkey modifiers. Change the .ahk file to suit your preference, resave it, and reload it into AHK.

Of course, we don't yet know if this will solve the problem. So keep us posted.



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 30 March 2014 14:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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I will keep you posted with my findings.


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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 30 March 2014 16:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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That works, though it seems I still need to do little work to make it work optimally.

I have set up this .ahk script now:

ScrollLock::Click
^ScrollLock::Click
+ScrollLock::Click
^+ScrollLock::Click

There are two problems with that, though.

That does't work for the Ctrl-Click accelerator (moving 100 kT cargo) and Ctrl-Shift-Click (moving 1000 kT cargo), and I would like to use a more handy key. The problem with the key to use is that it should be a single key which I don't use for anything else. I had thought to use the right Windows key, but Windows captures and overrides that before AHK detects it, and right now I cannot think of anything else I might not need for writing a text.

One possibility might be using one of the Danish characters æ, ø or å, as I am not likely to need to write a text in Danish while playing Stars!, and activating AHK within XP mode means it is only active in XP mode.

Abother problem is a that I cannot make the AHK script start with XP mode right now, but clicking a shortcut on the desktop isn't that much work.

Edit: It works with all accelerators with this script:

ø::Click
^ø::Click
+ø::Click
^+ø::Click


[Updated on: Sun, 30 March 2014 16:11]




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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 30 March 2014 16:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
nmid

 
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Darn.. I didn't understand the initial problem correctly...
though, did you try the link from the logitech forums?
http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Mice-and-Pointing-Devices/Mous e-Double-Clicks-when-I-only-Single-Click/td-p/243999/page/2
http://www.experienceit.pl/download

Regarding AHK, I wonder if you can use leftclick with a pause timer to act as a click in AHK.

In the mean time add this
Option A
-------
SetMouseDelay,1
-------
http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/SetMouseDelay.htm

If that doesnt work, try using it in combination with this
Option B
-------
LButton::
sleep,100
send {click}
return
-------
http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/Sleep.htm

Option C
and I wonder if we can use the UP function?
(The word UP may follow the name of a hotkey to cause the hotkey to fire upon release of the key rather than when the key is pressed down.)

LButton UP::click
This however will stop you from using your mouse to select text or drag icons around, so this won't be a very practical idea on it's own.
so perhaps
LButton UP::Lbutton
though I guess that will send it into a loop... Razz

ps - I'm not sure how to boot in safe mode on a VM either.. my keyboard's function keys don't get registered while it's booting up :s
I'm sure google would have an answer, but I'll check later Smile


[Updated on: Sun, 30 March 2014 16:54]




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I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.

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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 30 March 2014 16:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
nmid

 
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oh btw, you can possibly make AHK autostart if you add the ahk script to the
Start Menu > Program > Start up
folder.



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I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.

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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Sun, 30 March 2014 18:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
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nmid wrote on Sun, 30 March 2014 22:56
oh btw, you can possibly make AHK autostart if you add the ahk script to the
Start Menu > Program > Start up
folder.

I thought of that myself, but I couldn't find a folder of that name, and I didn't remember the exact spelling required for that folder to make it work.

However, if I don' manually shut down AHK before shutting down XP Mode, then the AHK script is running when I start XP Mode the next time, so I don't need it to autostart, I just have to remember not to shut it down Laughing

Since the problem only occurs in Stars!, not in any other programs that I have tried in XP mode, I don't think the suggestions in that link to Logitech forum would work, they seem to be solutions to problems related to the mouse itself (some of them hardware problems), and those problems would not just occur with Stars!, they would happen all the time.

In any case, I now have a solution that works well, thanks to the help of Autohost forum The wave



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Re: Trouble with Stars! in Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Pro Mon, 01 December 2014 17:11 Go to previous message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
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I found a workaround for the problem of mouse clicks sending too many clicks to the VM.

For me, running something somewhat CPU-intensive on the host machine seems to fix it.

My current choice is simply opening a browser and going to the Idle Blacksmith page. Probably anything that uses the Unity plugin will do the trick.

HTH anyone that comes across this thread in the future.



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