I have a strange problem where sometimes when I start my machine and login, litestep.exe uses all the cpu, causing the machine to freeze. It doesn't matter if I leave it alone for a while, it will just sit there using 100% of the CPU. I can kill litestep using task manager and start it back up again and everything is fine. The strange thing is it doesn't do it everytime I log in, and I don't think it's related to my current theme, as I have tried a few themes and they all do the same thing.
I'm using a P4 with XP-SP1 and the latest build of litestep.
Anyone with anything similar???
Hi mungo,
something similar has happened to me a couple of times, always after cold reboots / startups. In my case, I was able to pinpoint the culprit: my P4PE mainboard in conjunction with the PSU (Enermax) apparently takes a LONG time for enumerating the hardware properly at cold start — sometimes, it takes 30s just to pass POST —, and some features such as USB still aren't always recognised properly even after booting into WinXP. Result: WinXP thinks there's a graphics tablet, a mouse, a web cam, and a scanner, I start up Photoshop -> the shell (e.g. Litestep) goes into wild throes. Prior to Litestep, explorer just shut down and DrWatson came visiting. Reboot, everything works perfectly, no matter how often I log in or out, or reboot.
I found the issue could be reduced considerably with adding a bootup menu and a 10s delay before automatically booting WinXP.
Hope this helps,
-Sascha.rb
Addition:
For kicks and giggles, I switched VWM to RabidVWM. And lo and behold, 100% CPU load at bootup, EVERY time, but exactly the same behaviour you described above: re-start litestep, done. I'm back to ckVWM.
93,
-Sascha.rb
yup... thats a bug in rabidvwm on xp that occurs when there are no windows open at startup i believe... there have been some threads on it, check the modules forum
your psu in conjunction with the mainboard takes a long time enumerating the hardware?
i honestly can't imagine how the power supply unit would make the slightest difference to hardware detection. the initial power needed to boot and spin up all drives maybe, but not 'enumerating'.
that said, i've seen my own theme grind to a halt on random systems, only loading as far as lsxcommand.
try commenting out modules in your theme one by one. when you find the culprit(s) maybe email the authors and tell them what's going on.
Rabidvwm seems to be the culprit, since it's been commented out, the problem hasn't occurred again.
I had a similar problem one year ago (at least) when using RabidVWM (in some conditions only, as I can remember) and it only happens (on my Win2K box) when MS-Office was instaled. There's an exe running in background (sorry, I don't remember the name) which is installed each an MS-Office app is run. If you prevent this exe to run at startup (using BlackICE, for example) you will solve the problem.
Hi psynapse,
OT: "enumerating" might be the wrong word, agreed. Issue with my system: take a GeforceFX, an o/clocked P4, 1GB of RAM and 3 HD, and use a weak (but silent) PSU -> issues. ;)
93,
-Sascha.rb
Also, rabidvwm-1.1.1 will not do this. It's now available on loose-screws, so you should be able to change the netloadmodule line and get it.
yeah, 1.1.1 is pretty slick
The problem hasn't reoccured with rabidvwm-1.1.1
Ooo I love answers to problems without even having to ask. :D
Here I was content killing litestep.exe and restarting it.
ive also been having this problem, just downloaded rabidvwm-1.1.1 but am clueless as to what to do with it, can anyone give me some quick instructions, thanks in advance.
Stu.
in the theme's theme.rc, just change the line that reads:
*netloadmodule rabidvwm-1.01
-to-
*netloadmodule rabidvwm-1.1.1