External Control Tool broken

[cjtc]

I installed the Avast External Control program back in July and have used it on and off since.

However, I've just had reason to want to use it again and it just won't any more.

When I run "Avast! External Contol.exe" I just get a small, random group of pixels in the middle of the screen, along with a task bar icon. If I click on this task bar icon, the CPU spins up to 100% and sits there untill I kill the process (irsetup).

Trying again, if I right-click the task bar icon, I then get dialogs:
1) says "Filename not there". OK that, then
2) says "Could not load language module suf6lng.9/suf6lng.0"

Possibly relevant: I've not tried using the external control program since loading WinXP SP2.

Can anyone offer any advice?
Thanks

[cjtc]

OK. Solved!

Another thing which was (apparently) relevant was that, between the last time I used Avast! External Control and now, I have installed WindowsBlinds!!

With the help of Filemon from sysinternals, I saw that irsetup.exe was spinning when WindowsBlinds was attempting to skin the Irsetup UI. So, a quick unload of the WB process and the Avast! External Control Tool is working again.

It would seem that the Avast! External Control Tool extracts a small number of exectables to the TEMP folder and then attempts to run them from there. This is where irsetup.exe comes from. Adding (in my case) X:\Temp\irsetup.exe to the exclusion list in WindowsBlinds (per application settings) now fixes things so that I can run the External Control Tool without having to unload WB first!

Maybe this'll help for anyone else who runs into the same situation, though it'd be even better if Avast! External Control used facilities which were skin aware.

Chris

[Eddy]

May just as well get the latest version of the control util

[cjtc]

Yup did that. Thanks for the tip  

[Lisandro]

Maybe the author (RejZor) could say something about  

[RejZoR]

Well actually i cannot do much since WB forces skins to all applications except those that are Windows specific and have certain problems with WB (those that are excluded by default). All others have to be excluded manually via WB Control Panel (exclusions). I can only add notice in Readme file that you need to add AEC into WB exclusion list to get it work properly.

[RejZoR]

Notice added into latest AEC 1.5.100 Readme file

[cjtc]

Hi RejZor,

Unfortunately, it's not AEC that needs adding to WB's exclude list. It's irsetup.exe.

The only way to do this is to do the following:
1) Unload WB completely
2) Start AEC
3) Re-load WB
4) Open the WB configuration window
5) Open WB's per application settings
6) add %TEMP%/irsetup.exe to WB's per application settings and tell it to exclude it from skinning altogether.

All this is necessary, because, until AEC is run, irsetup doesn't exist in the file system anywhere and so can't be browsed to in WB's per app settings.

That said, once accomplished, it works just fine.

Hope this helps.