Re: Drawing maps

[Hated Moron]

Is this a 32-bit software not working on a 64-bit OS issue?

No, I don't think Windows 11 has introduced any incompatibilities of that sort. An example of what I am seeing is these two cases of audio functionality having changed, when it had previously been stable across multiple releases of Windows:

• If I run the BB4W recorder.bbc program I get a fatal 'mixerSetControlDetails failed' error. That utility has worked perfectly since Windows XP (and probably before) so for an issue to appear now is surprising and worrying.
  
  
• The ability to set the sound recording source to Stereo Mix has been completely removed (admittedly this may be a Dell issue rather than a Windows issue). Over the years it has become more difficult to enable this source, but this is the first time it has been impossible.

I had assumed that Windows 11 was different from Windows 10 in only very minor ways, but this is clearly not the case.

[JeremyNicoll]

Does the utility at: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/sound_volume_view.html

provide any info (eg about which internal devices are present / addressable / controllable) on your new laptop - possibly providing confirmation of the issue is with Dell and/or the audio device drivers?

I also googled for "mixerSetControlDetails" and there seems to be a fair number of hits suggesting other programmers have, for years, found that some calls to that API just fail for no obvious reason ... and one hit which mentioned that someone had found that after getting an error response from the API they then found that the action they requested had been done anyway. That was at:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/296 ... serr-error

(I do realise that what they were saying they were doing isn't the same as you trying to set a specific source, but it does suggest that the MS code is flakey.)

[Hated Moron]

someone had found that after getting an error response from the API they then found that the action they requested had been done anyway.

I could ignore errors rather than report them, but the point is that I've never previously needed to.

It's unfortunate that I am experiencing Windows 11 at the same time as a new PC (it being the catastrophic failure of my old laptop which prompted both) so I cannot tell whether any changes I notice are as a result of Windows or the hardware of this Dell. It may well be that the hardware is more to blame for the audio incompatibilities.

But there are certainly 'cosmetic' features of Windows 11 which I hate, for example the widespread replacement of textual descriptions with icons. I am used to right-clicking on a file (e.g. in File Explorer) and selecting 'copy', 'cut' or 'rename' from the context menu. But in Windows 11 these operations are now indicated by icons, not all of which are obvious to me.

The same thing applies, for example, to the 'Find' menu in Notepad, which no longer presents options for 'Match case' and 'Wrap around' as it did in Windows 10 but now shows them symbolically. Whether this is some new UI concept, or whether it's to simplify the task of translating the options to hundreds of different languages, I have no idea. But it's really horrible.

I confess that I haven't looked to see if there's some configuration option that restores the textual descriptions. That would be great, but I doubt it.

[JeremyNicoll]

someone had found that after getting an error response from the API they then found that the action they requested had been done anyway.

I could ignore errors rather than report them, but the point is that I've never previously needed to.

Sure, and I suspect that you're like me (in this respect anyway) that you do normally check return codes etc and pay attention to failures (unlike many programmers who just call services and expect them to work and don't check...

It's unfortunate that I am experiencing Windows 11 at the same time as a new PC (it being the catastrophic failure of my old laptop which prompted both) so I cannot tell whether any changes I notice are as a result of Windows or the hardware of this Dell. It may well be that the hardware is more to blame for the audio incompatibilities.

Yes, maybe. Have you asked Dell? (I don't know how easy that is - I contacted them a long time ago about a problem with a machine of theirs and they wouldn't help because I wasn't its original owner and there wasn't a still-running support contract - but the questions were as valid then as they would have been on day 1).

I was hoping, when I suggested the NirSoft utility, that it might reveal audio devices that perhaps lacked some attributes that others had, or something/anything to suggest there's an underlying hardware/driver issue.

You could possibly try a "live" linux ... but as far as I can tell from linux user groups that I lurk in (hoping to pick up linux knowledge without ever using the OS - except "live" versions for data recovery) it's common for audio hardware not to work well on that OS unless vendors supply linux-compatible proprietary drivers ... which many linux users won't use because it goes against the supposed free open sw ethos. And that means that I doubt you could prove anything that way.

But there are certainly 'cosmetic' features of Windows 11 which I hate, for example the widespread replacement of textual descriptions with icons. I am used to right-clicking on a file (e.g. in File Explorer) and selecting 'copy', 'cut' or 'rename' from the context menu. But in Windows 11 these operations are now indicated by icons, not all of which are obvious to me.

The same thing applies, for example, to the 'Find' menu in Notepad, which no longer presents options for 'Match case' and 'Wrap around' as it did in Windows 10 but now shows them symbolically. Whether this is some new UI concept, or whether it's to simplify the task of translating the options to hundreds of different languages, I have no idea. But it's really horrible.

With every release of Windows so far, I've wondered about installing an "explorer replacement". Every time I look at them I think they might cause more problems than they solve. For example (even in Win 8.1) I loathe the way that every time I rename a file's extension, explorer insists on asking me if I really meant to. Yes, for goodness sake! There's thousands of files on the machine with that extension - why wouldn't I mean it?

I know the W11 explorer context menu hides stuff on a submenu - so every interaction takes more effort.... though I've read that there might be a "revert to the old-style context menu" option coming along one day - I think it's been seen in some insider versions of the OS. There is (or was, it's a while since I made my notes)a registry tweak that reverses some or all of the new look. Whether that's properly supported by MS and will continue to work though, who knows?

I confess that I haven't looked to see if there's some configuration option that restores the textual descriptions. That would be great, but I doubt it.

See eg: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/win ... text-menus
and: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/win ... windows-10

which both looked plausible to me, though - as I don't have a W11 system yet - I haven't thoroughly explored the articles.

[Hated Moron]

There is (or was, it's a while since I made my notes)a registry tweak that reverses some or all of the new look.

I'm not going to risk that, particularly on a brand-new machine still under warranty. If it becomes an official option at some point, that's another matter.