WinGlulxe Difficulty

When last I ran WinGlulxe (that is, Glulxe.exe) in my Windows 7 machine, I had a dual monitor setup, and the interpreter window was over in the other monitor. As a result, when I try to run a game today, it’s invisible. I know it’s in the other monitor, because when I minimize and restore the game from the taskbar, the window zooms on and off the left side of my screen.

I uninstalled the program from the Control Panel, downloaded the new version, and installed it. The problem persists.

Therefore, the preferences file didn’t get overwritten by the fresh install. I do understand that there are many circumstances in which one doesn’t want the preferences overwritten, so this is not precisely an installer bug (though it would be nice if the installer would query the user). But it’s clearly a bug in WinGlulxe, because the software should query the system about the monitor configuration and rewrite its own preferences if the window location is in a monitor that isn’t connected.

The question remains: Where is the preferences file stored, so I can trash it? It doesn’t seem to be in C:\Program Files(x86)\WinGlulxe.

It’s probably either in “\Users\YOU\Local Settings”, or in the registry. In that case, run regedit.exe and search for “glulxe”.

There’s no Local Settings folder in my user folder. There are several glulxe entries in the Registry, and I would have no way of knowing which of them might be the source of the problem. At the moment, for instance, I’m looking at an entry for Glulxe.exe under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Local Settings/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Shell/MuiCache. There’s also an entry under WGlulxGame/shell/open/command.

Before deleting either of them, I’d like to have a better idea what I’m doing…

There is. It’s just that Windows chooses not to show it to you. You need to tweak your setting to show hidden files and folders. Or you can enter it manually by typing its URL in Explorer’s location bar.

It’s usually in “HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software”.

Windows 7 should be smart enough to figure this out. If you right-click the desktop and choose “Screen resolution”, does it show only the one monitor?

If so, do you have any third-party utilities installed that manage screen / display settings? OEMs often like to install these and mostly they are garbage. (The Lenovo one is particularly awful.)

If not, we’ll need to figure out why it thinks the second display is still attached.

Or you could just switch to Windows Git :wink:.

Yes, it shows only the one monitor. I clicked the Detect Monitors button and then clicked Okay, just to be sure. That didn’t help. No third-party helpers are installed – this is a stock HP Win7 Home Premium 64-bit system.

The Control Panel : Folder Options : View list shows me that hidden files and folders ARE being shown.

When I try typing “\Local Settings” in the URL bar for Windows Explorer, I get an “Access is denied” Error box.

In RegEdit, I can look at HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/WinGlulxe. There are two keys in that folder – (Default) and Startmenu_Folder. The value of (Default) is not set, so that’s not likely to be it. There’s nothing else that I’m spotting in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but of course I didn’t pore through every sub-folder.

You can delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/WinGlulxe completely. It’s just settings and will be recreated when you run the WinGlulxe the next time. Hopefully this will fix the issue.

Btw, there’s a trick you can do to get at the second screen. Most monitors have two video inputs, usually a DVI and SUB-D, and sometimes two DVI ports. And most graphics cards have two video outputs. Connect both to the same monitor and use the monitor’s controls to switch to other input. That other input should be the second desktop screen.

No luck yet. I was able to delete the StartMenu item from that Registry folder, but I couldn’t delete the (Default) item, as I got an error box saying “Unable to delete all specified values.” Since the value for that item is not set, this is perhaps not too surprising.

In any event, the problem persists.

…or I could just get out the second screen, hook it up, and drag the Glulxe window over to the main window. But I’m hoping for a software solution, since it’s a software problem.

The registry key you want to delete is “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Glk Applications\Glulxe”.

That’s a folder. RegEdit won’t let me delete folders, only keys. And there’s a whole buncha stuff in that folder – folders for Glk Buffer Styles, Glk Grid Styles, Glk Settings, Known Games, etc.

I tried deleting the (Default) item from the Glk Applications/Glulxe folder itself, but RegEdit wouldn’t let me do that.

The keys I want are probably in the Glk Settings folder. They’re Window Bottom, Window Left, Window Right, and Window Top. Is it safe to delete those?

Then there’s something screwed up in your system. Regedit should let you delete the whole lot.

Yes.

Okay, that fixed it. Thanks!

Btw, that’s most probably because you didn’t run regedit with administrator rights and it seems you have UAC active, which limits the kind of stuff you can do.

Another easy way around this is to employ Windows’ little used keyboard move/resize shortcuts: click the application on the taskbar so that it’s selected, make sure it’s not minimized. Hold the Alt key and press space, then release both. Press M and release it. Now you can use the cursor keys to move the window back onto the screen (so if it’s off to the left, hold down the right arrow until it appears.) Press Return to confirm the move, or Escape to cancel it.

In many situations, once you’ve hit a cursor key in the above sequence, you can also then wave the mouse around and the window will follow it. This can be less tiresome than holding down cursor keys.

(Edit: The above is the same as right clicking on the window in the task bar and selecting Move, and then using the cursor keys. For some reason when I start with the keyboard I can’t stop…sigh :slight_smile:)

You can also employ an app such as NirCmd to do grubby low level things to Windows without writing code. From a command prompt, nircmd win center ititle "Frotz" will grab any window with “Frotz” in the title and center it in the middle of the screen. Caveat: You can do horrible things with Nircmd, and its command line interface isn’t for the faint hearted. But if you ever wanted to open your CD tray without moving your hands from the keyboard, it’s the app for you :slight_smile:

I’m not sure about Windows 7 (still using XP if I have to use Windows for something), but in older versions you can run regedt32.exe (vice regedit.exe), which gave you some additional capabilities to delete protected things. With great power comes great potential to FUBAR the system, of course…