LSWITCHD TSR no longer pops up text mode window list after upgrade from 2.7 INI

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Beginning with 2.81, after loading LSWITCHD.EXE /SH in a full screen DOS session, and pressing Alt-Tab, the view is immediately returned to the OS/2 desktop with the lSwitcher graphical window list. This is not desirable, as it is much faster to switch between running applications (especially other full screen text mode ones) from the text mode list.

This issue resides in the hook dll. The latest build of the TSR, when run against the 2.70 dll works as expected.

(Summary changed to better reflect the problem.)

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Milestone renamed

[Gregg Young]

I haven't knowingly touched any code related to this. However I think that LSWITCHD.EXE had been removed from the 2.72 Beta. The present code base is at least loosely based on that Beta. I have removed some of it as it was badly broken. I can see if the hook was changed from 2.71 to the 2.72 Beta that would have effected this. My knowledge of DOS TSR programs could easily be put in a thimble with plenty of room left for a finger.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

ROFL!

The reason I never noticed this through all of the betas was that I had another entire copy of lSwitcher 2.70 sitting in C:\OS2\APPS\LSW, and that dll was getting loaded upon boot rather than the latest ones. Don't ask. I happened to be working in a full screen Quicken 7 for DOS(!) environment for most of the day today, and realized that I was missing something (I cleaned up the extraneous install a couple of days ago).

I would strongly lobby for the return of LSWITCHD.EXE, as it is truly useful. If we collectively used more full screen OS/2 sessions, I would argue for the text mode window availability when calling up Alt-Tab from those sessions, too.

BTW, I don't think anything needs to be done with the DOS code itself. I can run any version of LSWITCHD against the older lswhook.dll, and the TSR loads and talks to lswhook.dll.

[Gregg Young]

Does this work as you expect with 2.71 and/or the 2.72 Beta?

[Lewis Rosenthal]

2.71, yes, if what I have showing as 2.71 really is 2.71. (Andfrei sent me a number of 2.70 betas, and I think only one 2.71.)

The lswhook.dll I have from (apparently) 2.71 is:

 3-23-08   9:16          25,670    181  lswhook.dll

md5sum: 3f00922bba45cbd5336baa2109119909

The lswhook.dll I have from (apparently) 2.70 is:

 4-11-04  16:14          25,152     61  lswhook.dll

md5sum: 9e5814d9bb87e38a49bbc03cdfe71c86

How do those align with what you have?

I don't have a 2.72 beta build at all (I just checked again). I'm happy to test if you have a zip. Email it, please (we don't have it in the FTP space here at Netlabs, nor is it on Hobbes, and at this point, making it public is not a good idea.

[Gregg Young]

Hi I don't think 2.72 ever existed my bad. I just tried this I get the text mode popup with a clean install of the latest code on an eCS maintenance volume that never had lswitcher on it. I had tried some of the earlier versions but when I installed 2.81 lswitcher wouldn't start no error nothing. So I did a complete uninstall rebooted and installed 2.82o. The dos TSR work opening a text based window list. The only difference with o is the installer now works correctly with ecs.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

I'll be a monkey's uncle.

I just tried it on the T520 (special test driver for DOS sessions to get them to run - almost - on the T520) with 2.82n, and sure enough, the text mode menu worked. So, why not on the T43? Hmmm... Okay, I'm willing to close this as invalid, but now I have to figure out why it doesn't work on this particular machine, and the older one does.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Bad INI file.

I normally start with /i LSWITCH.INI, and I probably accumulated some cruft in there. I closed lSwitcher, moved the old INI out of the way, and started again, creating a fresh one. Text mode popup works again. I have not deleted the old INI, and will have a closer look at it. I will advise.