all my folders and shortcuts on my desktop were wiped out. i can no longer even create a shortcut or create any folders. what are some things i can do to get shit back?
Im guessing your icons are hidden. Right click on your desktop, goto "Arrange Icons By", and click "Show desktop icons".
you the man, but how do you think that happened? i got lil ones that use the pooter too but can't see them doing that by accident. thanks again.
Windows is full of anomalies ... If I had a nickel for every little glitch in the OS, Bill Gates would feel threatened. Scratch that ... I'd need about $5,000 for each little glitch. But that's still a LOT of glitches.
Its very doubtful it was a bug(or what you call "glitch"), Im not sure how it happened but windows doesnt just mess with the registry for no apparent reason, either your kids did it or maby you installed software that modified the entry Sure there are bugs in every piece of software, but i think people use that as an excuse for when strange things happen unexpectedly.
Perhaps you'd like to tell that to my Random Icon Syndrome that mixed up all of my icons a year ago? And the fact that playing Doom 95 was the only solution that fixed it? I'm not joking about that. Whenever I used Winamp's visualizations, my icons would switcheroo; my JPEGs would have the WAV icon, my text documents would have folder icons, my folders would have DLL icons, et cetera. And whenever I loaded up Doom 95, the problem went away and all the icons went back to normal. I have a history of problems like this; random things disappear or change at whim. Sometimes, even the mouse would move to random locations instead of how it was supposed to. Since then, I've learned how to keep an unadulterated install, but if you aren't a computer expert, I wouldn't be surprised if all the bugs did give you problems.
In case you didnt get it, when i said windows, i wasnt talking about external programs. What i was saying is that windows the OS doesnt fuck around with itself, its the programs the user installs and executes that will mess around with the OS.
And what I was saying, is that sometimes (even a lot of times), the OS does fuck around with itself. For example, in Windows 98, there is a VERY well known bug that happened before I even got a chance to install ANY programs; this mouse-glitch where everytime you move the mouse, the screen distorts and pixels tweak out and everything starts pixellating and blurring and such. I call it pixel noise, and I've seen it happen even in Windows 2000. That's not something that happens because of a program that you loaded on. And also, many times, loading on programs change certain Windows settings which cause Windows to malfunction, because it wasn't built robustly enough to handle it. For example, I've had to wipe out several computers because the OS allowed the registry to become too big, and the computer wouldn't boot. The backup registry files were also too large. And that's not a quirk that a program causes; indirectly it is, but Windows' inability to handle itself there is a prime example of what I'm talking about. Also ... Winamp booting up has little to do with icons, and Doom 95 has little to do with resetting icons. If you claim that it isn't a Windows glitch ... well ... Windows itself HANDLES those icons, and the programs do not so much as touch them. Windows is the only culprit that COULD change those icons ...
The posts i replied to were directed towards xp. And the problem you had with your mouse could have been an unrelated problem to a "bug" in windows, maby windows was incompatible with the hardware you were using..thats not a bug, or maby your manufactures video drivers were buggy. A program changing settings on windows externally is not something i would consider windows fault, you cant expect windows to detect everything a program changes. It is defiantly possible to change icons in an external program, and it is possible for a different program to handle those icons, Winamps visualation plugin could have improperly handled the windows API, and then maby DOOM which was based on 95/98 was well written to handle the 98 API called the same function again and reversed the effect, using 1 program and finding something wrong with windows and then blaming it on windows is stupid, considering if no other program except for that ones causes the same effect then its most defiantly the method the program used to perform the task, and its most likely the coders fault. Just because you dont understand the effects of other programs and cant properly interpret which program caused the problem doesnt make windows itself liable for the coders bad practice..
It's happened on many systems. And I've been to various forums and such online. There's a 98% chance that it's a Windows bug. But you CAN expect Windows to detect changes in parts of itself. That's actually the *point* of Windows, to be able to run programs after they've been installed and partially integrated into Windows ... And yet, on nearly identical installs of Windows, this same thing didn't happen. And few other people had it happen to them. The versions of the programs were still the same; the only thing that changed was the subtleties of a new Windows install. And yet, in this case, I *severely* doubt that the coders' bad practice had anything to do with it, considering on the same version of Windows running the same versions of Winamp and Doom 95, the problem didn't happen; it was just a different install. This leads me to believe that Windows was not correctly handling itself. Besides; the way that the icons were messed up ... those aren't simple API calls. The icons were also offset, not just jumbled; meaning, looking at each of the icons, at the top, you could see about two lines of pixels that belonged to a *different* icon, and to the left, you could see about three more lines that belonged to yet another icon. There is definitely a *bug* involved in that, and all signs point to Windows' handling of its own icons being the culprit, because Doom 95 and Winamp don't appear to have any method whatsoever for even being related to what happened.
On a fresh install of windows the code doesnt recompile itself with different changes. So on 2 fresh installs of windows, ONLY with winamp and doom 95 installed the problem occures, and only on 1 machine? Ok, so you are right, the API's have nothing to do with the distortion of the graphical output, because windows paints the image all as one, not necessarily pixel by pixel. And the api calls would be responsible for the painting. You say that doom 95 and winamp have nothing relevant to the problem yet the problem only persists when those two programs are involved. So, now that you have described the problem even further, what do winamp and doom 95 have in common? They both use a graphics library to create the visual environment, so the problem was most likely created by a hardware error, a manufactures drivers, or most likely the person who coded the visulation plugin for winamp, was that visulation plugin downloaded and not installed with winamp by default?
