A first method manages a display screen window of an application program that is halted and includes the following steps: in responsive to an application program being halted, (a) copying the informational content of a window of the halted application program; (b) creating a second window, referred to as a shadow window, to be in registration with the window of the halted application program such that the window of the halted application program is hidden from the view of an observer of the display screen; (c) painting the second window with the copy of the informational content of the halted application program; and (d) in response to a message to re-paint the second window, re-painting the second window with the copy of the informational content of the halted application program. A second method is responsive to an application program being halted for (a) copying the window or windows of the halted application program; (b) intercepting a window re-paint message that is directed to the halted application program; and (c) re-painting the display screen window of the halted application program with that portion of the copy that corresponds to the window of the halted application program. Both methods may also invalidate obscured portions of the application window, such as by setting the corresponding portion of the copy to some predetermined color.
The invention provides an apparatus and computer method, generally referred to as ANTI-FREEZE.TM., for controlling the operation of a computer running under an operating system such as WINDOWS.RTM. 95 and WINDOW.RTM. NT operating system, or their like, for making responsive a program when that program becomes unresponsive to inputs from the keyboard and/or mouse. ANTI-FREEZE.TM. provides a user interface for the selection of an unresponsive program and then causes the operating system to send a message to the selected unresponsive program. If the selected unresponsive program responds to the message from the operating system, ANTI-FREEZE.TM. determines if the selected unresponsive program has any disabled windows and if so enabling a disabled window resulting in the selected unresponsive program to again become responsive. If the selected unresponsive program does not respond to the message from the operating system, ANTI-FREEZE.TM. modifies the selected unresponsive program to become responsive to messages sent from the operating system to the selected unresponsive program resulting in the selected unresponsive program to again become responsive.
The invention is an apparatus and computer method for controlling the operation of a computer running under an operating system such as WINDOWS.RTM. 95 and WINDOWS.RTM. NT operating system, or their like, that do not require a footprint in the programs running under the operating system. A program, hereinafter referred to as CrashGuard.TM., is stored and installed in a computer thereby being established as the "debugger" in the user's systems. Once so established CrashGuard.TM. may be stored elsewhere then the computer memory. Whenever a fatal error occurs the "Just in Time" debugging facility of the WINDOWS.RTM. 95 and WINDOWS.RTM. NT operating system, or their like, will suspend the target program, will load CrashGuard.TM. as the designated "debugger" into memory space not allocated to the target program, identifies the target program to CrashGuard.TM. and executes CrashGuard.TM.. CrashGuard.TM. will cause additional memory space to be added to the virtual memory of the target program. Thereafter CrashGuard.TM. will store into the additional memory space a routine that will allow the user to take such actions as to execute a Save or Save As command thereby not losing data that would otherwise have been lost.
A method and system for automatic object refresh. A target object specification is associated to a source object specification for performing a replacement (refresh) of at least one target object with a corresponding source object. When a target object is accessed for the first time, or released from a last access, one or more source objects may replace (refresh) the locations of one or more corresponding target objects. A comparison of values of an identical attribute may be performed, such as a date/time stamp, or trap count, of corresponding source and target objects. The refresh may be conditional depending on the outcome of the comparison. The conditional refresh is: an automatic replacement of at least one of the objects of the target object specification with a corresponding object of the source object specification, an automatic asynchronous notification that a more current or suitable object exists and option for automatic refresh therefrom, or an automatic replacement of at least one of the objects of the target object specification with a corresponding object of likely better stability. The source object specification and target object specification may be specified with wildcards, map files, or environment variables. The source objects and target objects may be located locally, or remotely, to the data processing system that accesses the objects.
An apparatus and computer method, that are generally referred to herein as ANTI-FREEZE.TM., are provided for controlling the operation of a computer running under a multitasking operating system (OS) such as WINDOWS.RTM. 95 or WINDOWS.RTM. NT operating system. When an application program becomes unresponsive to inputs from the keyboard and/or mouse, ANTI-FREEZE.TM. provides a user interface for identifying the unresponsive program and for causing the OS to send a message to the identified program. If the identified program responds to the message, ANTI-FREEZE.TM. determines if the identified program has any disabled windows and if so, enables a a disabled window. If the identified program does not respond to the message, ANTI-FREEZE.TM. modifies the stack or another part of the identified program in a way that causes it to become responsive to messages sent from the OS.
StackTrace refers generally here to an apparatus and computer method for use with multitasking operating systems (OS's) such as WINDOWS.RTM.95. StackTrace allows a program to again become responsive to OS messages after the program freezes. A user can then save work which was not yet saved at the time the program froze. In one mode, StackTrace identifies a special signature that appears in the virtual stacks of certain kinds of programs. This special signature is a consistently-used return address to a standard-for-type calling function of the OS. StackTrace locates the special signature in the virtual stack of the frozen program and then changes values stored in context registers of the frozen program to cause a return through the in-stack signature location as would have happened if the halted program function had successfully completed. StackTrace then initiates multitasked processing of the program so that the program will return by using the in-stack signature location. This enables the program to become responsive to messages from the OS.
