Edit Menu > Preferences, nothing happens

Report · Dec 23, 2014

In new Framemaker 12 installation, I clicked Edit > Preferences and nothing happens.

My click is registered and the menu goes away. But preferences dialog does not appear.

I am admin on this pc.

Running Win7 on HP laptop.

Report · Dec 23, 2014

It's possible that it is appearing somewhere outside of your screen area. The position of this window is specified in the ModelDialogPosition.ini file located in the user area (i.e. C:\Users\,username.\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\FrameMaker\12\ModalDialogPosition.ini).

Look at the prefs.dbre entry in this file. It contains four digits (top, left, bottom, right) specifying the corners of the dilaog in screen units. If any of the digits exceed your laptops screen resolution (e.g. 1366 x 768) then adjust the numbers to move it back to where you need it, e.g.

prefs.dbre=145,193,781,657

Note: make a copy of this file first and keep the same dimensions (i.e. bottom - top & right - left) otherwise you'll start clipping the window display.

Also, (just in case) try the shortcut <esc> i p to see if this pops up the preference window. If it does, then something is messed up with your menus (and you don't need to make any changes to the dialog ini file).

Report · Dec 23, 2014

Esc i p causes fatal err and shuts down FM. I tried some variations, such as holding ESC while pressing i, then releasing to press p. Or using three separate key presses. All same results.

On my pc, there is only one entry in that .ini file, called OPENALLFILES=74,98,597,481.

I played with the values to bring the dialog close to upper left (30,30 then 50,50 for T,L). No fix.

Adobe Chat Support had me create a new Admin User, using some command line entry in DOS that included "/activate:yes" - or something like that. [Am kicking myself for not capturing it for future ref.] So I changed to that new admin user and FM works as expected.

So apparently something is up on my pc. I do get Access Denied pop-ups from time to time when I know full well I should not. But three AV scanners say pc is clean. So I am now trying to chase this down; thinking there is no issue with FM at all. I certainly have never seen this before.

While very frustrating, my work-around is to use that new Admin User to work in FM.

Incidentally, most likely related, as I write this, I just discovered FMv7 also has a headache. As it loads, a pop-up occurs two or three times that a file being downloaded could not be written to specified location. AWEXfiles.txt. When I click thru, and FMv7 loads, the Edit Menu is greyed out!

I am going to follow this trail now, I suppose.

Thanks for your reply,

Dave

Report · Dec 27, 2014

Solution found!

APPDATA statement was missing from the User's Environment Settings.

Discovered by comparing environment settings between two user profiles.

I would have no idea why this was missing, unless malware did it for me!

Note: As for the Access Denied pop-ups: A couple of them completed my task if I clicked through instead of cancelling. Possibly all of them do. I'll be watching those.