Laptop Queries

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Laptop Queries

Postby dparker » Fri Oct 24, 2003 10:28 am

I have two general questions/points regarding the use of, in particular, our latop which is a Dell C600. We have noticed that ...

If the lid is shut at any time, even if you instruct Windows XP not to do anything if the lid is shut, it will always turn of the LCD and direct the primary output back to the projector. This could be embarrassing if (like we did) you still have the proj. on showing the black F10 screen. Everyone suddenly sees the operators desktop. The most annoying thing when this happens is that upon opening the lid, you need to re-enable the LCD which then disables the dual output and the proj. screen goes off. We could not then shut down Zionworks to re-enable the 2nd monitor, we get an Illegal Exception type message when trying to close and it takes 3-4 attempts using task manager to close the program. We can then re-enable dual output, rerun Zionworks and everythings fine. Is there a quicker way of working around this problem (other than the obvious - DONT SHUT THE LID), with the best will in the world, it could still happen by accident.

We have also noticed that some power management settings, namely the shutting down of the video after say 30mins is a really bad idea as the same thing as above generally happens IF you can actually get the video to re-appear by moving the mouse. We couldnt and had to re-boot which seems to take an age when the worship leader is staring at you :)

Unless your pastor only preaches for 10 minutes, I suggest you all turn off all power management when you can, and always if you are running from the mains.
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Not a solution - but an idea

Postby Diceman » Thu Nov 27, 2003 2:26 am

Good advice - cheers.

Ordinarlily I use a desktop PC, so I remeber on one occasion a long time ago sitting moving the mouse slightly every few moments during a preach to avoid the laptop falling asleep on me. It kept me awake - as did the preacher I am happy to say :-)

There seems to be quite a few users who are encountering difficulties with specific hardware problems and compatibility issues, which are at present beyond the time and scope of the Zionworx development team remit, on the grounds of shear quantity and time required to resolve them.

A good few of them have a similar effect (regardless of cause) of throwing images onto the projector which are embarrassing to the operator during his/her performance.

One solution would be a separate application tool (possibly shipping with Zionworx) which is installed to run on windows startup as an invisible application. The program would simply provide a hot-key (perhaps a function key or user definable) to the user which would place a test card of the user's choice (default black) on all windows monitors. This would provide the user with a rapid solution if anything where to go amiss during a show, giving them opportunity to turn off the projector or disconnect the PC before attempting to remedy the fault. It would be similar to the concept of the "We apologize for the disruption to your service notice.." that occasionally is activated by the transmission controller when broadcast television goes AWOL.

A more sophisticated version would give the user the choice of having an mpeg animation on standby. And more importantly would automatically detect when there was a problem with screens or Zionworx.

Before such software could be written, a short term solution might be this: Since most of these embarrassments occur on the Primary monitor - hide everything including the desktop full of icons etc. using the blank screensaver.

To get this to work in XP:

Right click the desktop, select, new, shortcut
Click browse
Navigate to the windows\system32 folder and select the scrnsave.scr file
Type in a name (e.g. screen blanker) and click finish
Right click the shortcut you have just created
Choose properties
Click your mouse in the shortcut-key box and press the shortcut key of your choice (make sure to use a key not trapped by any of your other software or windows). Your selection should appear in the Box e.g. "F8"
Click ok and test your screen blanker by hitting the hotkey.

This procedure may work in 98 although I have not tested it. If not then you will need to make a copy of scrnsave.scr rename it to scrnsave.exe create a shortcut to it and include the /s switch in the shortcut command line. If you fail to do this to the exe file you will simply get a "This screensaver has no options that you can set" message box (If you havenÂ?t already deduced, Screensavers are renamed executables that run in settings mode if no switch or the /c switch is given).

The only drawback with this short-term solution is that it will disappear if your mouse is moved or another key is pressed (since that's what screen savers are for). I might consider hacking the previously discussed program together if there is enough interest. Or maybe one of you guys may beat me to it.

Any thoughts or comments are very welcome.

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Postby Peter_in_Christ » Fri Sep 24, 2004 12:38 am

You can also create a new Login account in XP with a tidy desktop, black background and etc dedicated for running in Chruch Services...

as a temporary solution
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