XWin.exe causes Windows apps. to freeze

[Ryan Johnson]

On 21/11/2011 12:14 PM, Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:
> I have a persistent problem at work after XWin has been running for a
> while (sometimes hours, sometimes days).  Windows programs will
> spontaneously freeze
> For example,
> I'm composing a message in Outlook, and all of a sudden, my keyboard
> stops responding, then I'll get the Windows hourglass in that window.
> Or I'll be surfing in Firefox and window changes just stop, again
> hourglass.  Once this happens, killing XWin.exe from the task manager
> immediately releases the hang condition(s), though the hang may
> release itself if I wait several minutes (yeah, right).  At this
> point, I can re-start XWin, but later on, it will happen again.
>
> I'm starting XWin.exe from the install shortcut:
>
>    C:\cygwin\bin\run.exe /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c /usr/bin/startxwin.exe
>
> I'm running the latest of Cygwin everything, the problem has been
> across several (many) releases of the Xorg server.  I think it's using
> the default options for multi-monitor, cut/paste, etc.  I can usually
> copy/paste between XWin and MS Windows (and usually Citrix) without
> any problems.  I keep thinking that the problem is something in the
> XWin code that interfaces to Windows' copy/paste engine (OLE?).
If you think it's clipboard related, try running with -noclipboard and 
see if that fixes it. Downside is, you lose all clipboard functionality...

BTW, what do you use x11 for? Other than the odd gnuplot session, I've 
not needed an X server since switching from xterm to mintty (which just 
became the official cygwin terminal). If a similar situation applies to 
you, you could temporarily switch to mintty while doing the above 
experiment and still be able to use clipboard in the meantime.

Finally, I've never used a multi-monitor setup myself, but according to 
the XWin man page you should specify the -multimonitors option since you 
apparently (really??) don't run in -multiwindow mode. Or maybe the man 
page is just out of date and -multiwindow is the default now, in which 
case multiple monitor support comes for free.

Ryan


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