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Any time I shut down or re-start XP with the TIR running it takes a really long time for it to happen. I've been using it for some time now and have just resighned to making sure to shut TIR down before I re-boot. But sometimes I forget. Is there a known fix for this? Any input would be welcome.

Thanx

You should always shut down your NaturalPoint software when you turn off your computer, just like any other program that is running.
If you don’t shut the software down Windows will wait for a response and classify it as a non responsive program. There is a Windows XP fix for this and it will allow you to change the value that the operating system will wait for a program to respond.
I will need to run through my stuff at home, but when I find it I will e-mail it to you.

I am curious to learn if the software re-starts okay or do you have the Run at Startup box checked?

Thanx for the response Wayne. What your saying makes complete sense. I guess I have not tried it with the the "Run at Startup" box checked. I'll try it and see if it makes any difference. Since I use it for flight sim stuff I don't always have it on. Although it would'nt bother me to have it running all the time so long as I don't have to remember to shut it down. Any info you have on an adjustment in XP would be great!

Thanx again

I tried it with "Run at Startup" enabled and it still hangs for a long time. About 3min. I would guess. It did launch at startup and work fine after that.

[ February 26, 2004, 05:28 PM: Message edited by: Over-G ]

Wayne,

Just to give you an update. I tried changing the value for "Auto End Tasks" key to 1. No joy. Is that the same fix you were thinking of?

Hello Over-G,

As promised I rooted around in my achieves at home last night and found the fix that we could try in your case.
I will e-mail you the fixes, however the best way is to manually shut the software down yourself, these fixes should do it for you should you forget.

What I believe is happening in your case is that sometimes Windows waits a long time (sometimes more than a minute) to finally acknowledge that a particular program is "Not Responding" even though it is waiting for a command from the user as the program is running and active.
In your case Windows is waiting the normally allotted time should there be a user request, but of course Windows will never receive this request because you are shutting down your computer.
But this can be changed in ALL Win32 platforms: 95, 98, 2000, ME and XP by adding a small command string and value in the registry.

I have also included a small registry fix with an additional Registry setting, valid ONLY for Windows 2000/XP, and this allows the administrator/power user to control the timeout delay on all open services, apps, DLLs, VXDs etc... take to close and "clean up" after themselves and/or save any cached data to disk(s) before complete system shut down. At the end of this interval, the remaining open services will be automatically shut down by Windows.
If your computer is running lots of services, this may take a long time.
But you can decrease the default "waiting" time delay allotted to each service.

Wayne

Wayne,

Thanx very much for the info you sent me. I have applied the settings as described and now XP shuts down in the blink of an eye.
Very cool stuff! The bad news is it has no effect if I leave TIR running. This is really not a big deal for me and I would not wish for you to spend anymore time with it. I can say that the TIR has worked extremely well for me and have no real complaints. I will be buying the TIR2 version very soon if for no other reason than I really like the groovy blue light it has! LOL Just a note here. I have had the same problem with the shut-down time with a few different system builds. Using different mobo, cpu etc. Also it has occured with default XP installs as well as after triming the fat from XP for performance gains.

Thanx again. Your help here is Tops!

Ed

Yes! At last, someone with the same problem as me!

I complained to Jim Richardson about this problem two years ago with SmartNav and I've had it ever since then with both SmartNav and TrackIR, and on two different computers: one Win2k and one WinXP. Two years ago Jim just said NaturalPoint is doing all the right things and my symptom was strange. He couldn't reproduce it and so, naturally, couldn't help me.

If I shut down NaturalPoint.exe by hand then I can shut down Windows fine. If I don't, I have to wait 2 minutes for my machine to shut down.

NaturalPoint.exe seems to hang when windows shuts it down, but not when I shut it down. Doesn't this mean there's a problem with the way it hooks the windows shutdown message?

I've even tried writing a group policy shutdown script to shutdown NaturalPoint.exe using kill.exe, but it doesn't help: windows still has two separate 1-minute seizures when shutting down.

I use NaturalPoint all the time, so have "run on startup" checked. Is there *any* way for me to automatically kill it smoothly on shutdown?

Since I'm a hardware developer, I restart my PC often, but I usually forget to kill NaturalPoint, so have to wait for ages each time.

Help! Someone!

Thanks you.

Hello:

This is on our list of things to fix for the next release of SmartNAV, coming in not that long a time from now, really, trust me!

Any progress on this Jim? You message says it's coming soon, but the message itself has been there for a long time now. What's the ETA?

Thanks,
Berwyn

Same problem here since I have TIR (2years or so).

Is it possible to make the fix Wayne was talking about accesible for all? Or send it to me?

Thx in advance
TBird