Re: Bug: can not start a w32 GUI program from Emacs

["Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 02:09:02 +0100
>> From: "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
>> Cc: Emacs Devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
>>
>> I think I know the source of the problem now. It seems to be an MS 
>> Windows bug. Opening and just closing any menu eats 4 GDI Objects 
>> (according to Task Manager) that are assigned to explorer.exe.
>> In those cases where I have seen the problem XP has been running for
>> quite a while and the number of GDI Objects for explorer.exe seems
>> to have meat a limit.
>>     
>
> How long is ``quite a while'', and how many GDI object did you see
> used by explorer in the Task Manager?
>
> Anyway, AFAIK there's no relation between GDI objects usage and
> inability of start-process to run the program.
>   

It takes quite a while for this to show up. Task Manager says that 
explorer.exe holds 9,999 GDI objects when it does and each menu access 
adds 4 to that figure (before it hits the roof).

I believe start-process may work as expected, but the program that was 
started does not. Maybe there is some error code from CreateProcess 
indicating this but I do not know. The started program is not painted on 
the screen as it should. Just a transparent window with borders.

>   
>> Have anyone heard of this bug before? Fully patched XP Professional.
>>     
>
> My XP system casually runs for weeks on end, and I never saw any
> problem with resource depletion.  But I didn't try to run explorer
> from Emacs, either.
>   

I think I have found the circumstances then this bug shows up. This bug 
only shows up if you use StickyKeys. (I am rather used to notice obscure 
bugs and this is one of them. MS has even once told my employer that 
they wanted me to stop reporting bugs. Until things finally broke down 
completely because of the bugs I noticed subtle things from.)

So now I am thinking about helping MS by reporting the bug. There 
something inside me hesitating, but I think I will still do that. ;-)

Do you have any idea of where to report it?