SPCR

Guys,
Just a quick request for ideas..

I've just started messing around with a new laptop for my sister and it came with Vista.. so far so good (I guess).

But I have a problem - for the first ten minutes or so there is an area in the center of the desktop that is kind of weird.. it looks no different than normal but if I try to click on anything that already has focus within that area, say the OK button of a dialog box or something, then it suddenly loses focus.

It's as if there was a totally invisible window and a click in that area draws the system focus to that window and takes it away from the window I think I'm clicking on.

Any ideas what this app could be that's getting in the way? It's not the Vista sidebar. The apps I have installed are well known to work and I've used them in previous versions of windows without a problem.. it must be something that came preinstalled on this laptop (Asus F3F-AP242c).

I remember there used to be an app under Win32 and X Windows (xwininfo) that'll allow you to click a window and it'll tell you which application it belongs to - anyone know of anything like that that'll work under Vista?

TIA.
DonP.

btw.. I forgot to mention - I'm just looking for a small app to dump the window info; I don't want to install all of MSDN etc.. I'm just looking to run the thing once to identify the application catching the mouse events.

Ok, I'll answer my own question
I've found a few apps that may do this:
http://dennisbabkin.com/php/download.php?what=WinID
http://www.imagos.ru/mihon/.

I've given the laptop away now so I can't test what was getting in the way.

DonP wrote: I remember there used to be an app under Win32 and X Windows (xwininfo) that'll allow you to click a window and it'll tell you which application it belongs to - anyone know of anything like that that'll work under Vista?

TIA.
DonP.

You can use Process Explorer for this:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysint ... lorer.mspx

...PE also has a bunch of other really nice features. It's a must-have on XP, although Vista's task manager has received a much-needed update, so it isn't quite as big of an improvement.

Thanks Beyonder, I'll have a look at it when I get my hands on the laptop again.

Ok, for the record it was an app called atkosd2 - which is the app that draws stuff on the screen (I guess OSD is the giveaway) when you increase or decrease volume and use any of the Fn keys.
It belongs to Asus so this issue should only be specific to Asus Laptops and to make the dead zone go away all you have to do is make it draw something, so decrease the volume once and the dead zone is gone (until next reboot).