Dexpot Forum

I've been using Dex for about two years.

Dex is the "best of breed" so far in my search for a Virtual Desktop manager.

I probably push the limits on it's supported usage.

Now I have some comments and recommendations.

First, I'm fully aware that Dex is a European (specifically, German) product, so I do not fault you for a lack of serious English Language support. If you watched nothing but American TV News, you'd get the distinct feeling that America is the only country in the world with paved roads. I know this is not the case, and I know that the developers of Dexpot are top notch developers. I really respect you guys.

But I need to suggest a few things.

Until recently, I've used Dex on Windows Server 2003. I'm a web developer, so I have to have Win2k3 Server on my laptop, if only to support IIS Web Hosting for my very many website development projects.

Dexpot under Win Server 2003 has always been a nightmare. The kernel differences between XP and 2k3 are very minor, but for Dex, they do make a difference. Under 2k3, it is only a matter of weeks before Dex will lose it's mind and trash all my desktops - usually by picking one desktop as the target. It will, with little warning, one day decide that one of the desktops should collect ALL the icons from all other desktops. I end up with one desktop that has ALL the icons from all other desktops on it. HUNDREDS of duplicate icons, all crammed onto one of the desktops. I have to then go an delete all the dups.

This usually happens under one of two scenarios:

1). I leave the system unattended until the system turns the monitor off. When I move the mouse, it comes back up trashed. I can alleiviate this by turning off the screen saver and setting the power settings to "never sleep/hibernate", and never turn the monitor off.

2). I undock or redock the laptop. When I undock, I lose the external monitor. When I dock, I gain a monitor. This causes Dex to barf (ie, lose it's digital mind), occasionally.


I've recently solved some of these problems by going back to Win XP (which Dex seems MUCH to favour), and running 2k3/IIS under a VM in VMWare.

But I still have had a problem (although, to a MUCH lesser degree) with the desktop trashing problem. This time, it seems that too many icons on one desktop cause Dex to collect SOME of the extra icons from other desktops onto the default desktop at every boot.

Having dealt with Dex crashes/trashes so many times, I've taken to collecting all my lost icons on one desktop. This "collector" desktop now has a couple of hundred icons. It seems that when one desktop has "too many" icons, it tends to take a few of them and put them on the "boot/default desktop" at startup time. I can live with this by cleaning things up and taking all the desktop icons and putting them in a single folder on that "collector desktop", and thus reducing the number of icons there.

So, Dex is still a "love/hate" relationship.

Suggestions:

Consider exposing some of the internals to developers. We can help. Dex is, supposedly, written in VB. There are lots of us VB developers who could help.

There is a very distinct time when this icon corruption occurs. A "snapshot" backup, every so many hours, or once a day, or so, with the ability to back up to previous configurations would go a long way. I know immediately when this corruption occurs. If I could choose a profile from 30 Minutes; One Hour; 4 Hours; 8 Hours; 1 day; 2 days; 1 week ago, etc, I could reduce my time spent rearranging icons very considerably.

Take an internal "snapshot" of icon arrangements every hour, four hours, 1 day, etc, and let me "roll back" to that setting. I can then handle the few extra "lost icons" fairly easily.

Share with us how you locate, position and record icon locations in VB, and we will help fix this problem.


Kirby L. Wallace
kirby at wallaceinfo dort ccom.

Settings-General/ Profiles (bottom of window)/ Load, Save, Save as..., delete. Choose profile: ..... this is the feature you were suggesting to the dexpot team. i bought my first computor just over three months ago.

I am also having a small problem similar to your's. I am running Vista, and when my laptop wakes up from sleep mode, Dex will ask for my password as if i am quitting the application, and then quit whether I put in my password or not. When Dex closes, it will move all my windows to a single desktop.

I don't use Dexpot anymore. But, from what I can remember, there is a way to prevent the problem you describe. You can't stop all the icons returning when the programme closes, but you can stop your icon profiles from being reset to this chaos. It depends on the choices you make when you reopen the programme, i.e., you choose the profile configuration

YES to "Exit and close all programs which are not on this desktop"
and "keep window distribution"

NO to "Letzte konfiguration verwenden" / "last configuration used"

Also, load an empty "default" profile when reopening, so an empty space in the "profiles" field, which you get by scrolling up to the empty space and clicking. Do not load your profiles from here because it will just load the their last state, which was chaos. Reload your profiles from "Settings".
Now I don't know if this will work as there have been updates since I last used the programme.
It's a good programme and I do want to start using it again.