Lazarus has black windows on Windows XP: Solved!

[Frederick]

I've moved this question from the programming forum because it relates to installation problems. My main platform is Mac OS X, but I need to run Lazarus on Windows to compile for Windows. On the Mac I use the latest svn, but was using daily snapshots on Windows. I have had it running before on Windows XP, but now Lazarus opens up with windows that are mostly black. It appears to not be drawing the content to the right context. 

When I install I remove all previous copies of Lazarus and Free Pascal, and any configuration directories that I can find. Lazarus works and compiles my programs fine, but I can not see the file contents or any error messages if they occur.

I just tried installing the following packages with no luck:

lazarus-0.9.30-fpc-2.4.2-win32.exe
lazarus-0.9.30.2-fpc-2.4.4-win32.exe
Lazarus-0.9.31-33932-fpc-2.4.4-20111204-win32.exe

I tried running the original untouched copy as installed, and also tried:

make clean all

Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Frederick

[ludob]

I've seen that when using odd or low screen color depths. Try setting 32 or 16bit color.

[felipemdc]

Could you attach a screenshot showing your monitor options from windows xp? Like color depth, resolution, number of monitors, etc. Also theme, color scheme.

[Frederick]

I almost never use the XP system, it is installed on VMware on my Mac, so all options, as far as I know, are default.

32 bit color
Screen resolution is 1280 x 800 (less if I am not in full screen mode)
60 Hertz refresh
Using the one default monitor.
Theme is "WindowsXP"
Desktop is "Bliss", color is blue.

Thanks.

[Frederick]

Here is what Lazarus looks like with my project open. This is:

Lazarus-0.9.31-33932-fpc-2.4.4-20111204-win32.exe

I can compile using the menu, and the resulting program works fine, no graphics issues using StringGrid, BGRBitmap or common controls.

[felipemdc]

I almost never use the XP system, it is installed on VMware on my Mac, so all options, as far as I know, are default.

Looks like a bug in VMware then, because I have never heard of this happening on a real hardware and on top of that I've never heard of that happening with Parallels Desktops. I use Windows XP in Parallels Desktop with Lazarus in my MacBook and I never had problems, so I would recommend Parallels.

[Sora-Kun]

felipemdc +1, i agree, mine runs on Virtual Box and it works fine too.
Maybe you should try Oracle Virtual Box too, check it: http://www.virtualbox.org/
Hope it helps.

[ludob]

Before you get rid of VMWare,  try changing the hardware acceleration settings in the virtual machine settings.

[eny]

Looks like a bug in VMware then, because I have never heard of this

Not too fast  something similar happened to me too on my non-VMWare config.
I use VirtualStringTree and sometimes that particular control when dropped on a form is displayed in black.
I then have to set it to default (or white) in the form's OnCreate.

[Frederick]

Thanks all.

I tried disabling VMware "Accelerate 3D Graphics" first. Also tried turning off Hardware Acceleration completely in Windows, and disabling "write combining" (whatever that is). It did not make any difference.

While having only limited experience with VMware, other programs do run fine. Even the programs I compile in Lazarus work fine. Perhaps it is a bug in VMware, but could there be an issue with the editor control Lazarus uses? I have not seen a problem with TStringList, TDrawList, TMemo, or other controls used in my programs.

I don't currently have Parallels installed, but have used it in the past. Maybe I'll give that a shot. Honestly, I'd prefer to cross-compile directly on the Mac, but have not had success in getting a GUI application to cross-compile. I'd appreciate any tips on doing that.

Cheers,
Frederick

[felipemdc]

While having only limited experience with VMware, other programs do run fine. Even the programs I compile in Lazarus work fine. Perhaps it is a bug in VMware, but could there be an issue with the editor control Lazarus uses?

I don't think so, some virtual machines have subtle bugs that only particular applications might trigger. I still remember how compilation would fail with wierd errors in the PearPC virtual machine while other things worked ok and no such error has ever been seen on a real machine...

I would recommend that you send a bug report to VMWare, so they can fix their problem.

And like I said before, Parallels is nearly perfect, I've never seen it give any problems.

I don't currently have Parallels installed, but have used it in the past. Maybe I'll give that a shot. Honestly, I'd prefer to cross-compile directly on the Mac, but have not had success in getting a GUI application to cross-compile. I'd appreciate any tips on doing that.

There is hardly much of a difference between compiling on the Mac and inside the Parallels virtual machine. The VM has mouse integration, network integration, it can share directories, it loads quite fast, doesn't disturb the performance of the system in my macbook and there are even modes to make the programs appear as normal Mac programs if you want that...

[Bart]

Lazarus IDE (not compiled LCL programs) does have some painting issues (may or maybe not related), that XP (and up) users never see, but they are there non the less (issue 13062 in the bugtracker).
Maybe your particular setup also makes a painting issue visible?

Bart

[felipemdc]

Lazarus IDE (not compiled LCL programs) does have some painting issues (may or maybe not related), that XP (and up) users never see, but they are there non the less (issue 13062 in the bugtracker).
Maybe your particular setup also makes a painting issue visible?

I dont think so, he is using Windows XP. I'm sure one of the hundreds of thousands of people that download Lazarus for Windows would notice such problems.

About Windows 9x Microsoft doesn't even recognize it existed. All information about Windows 9x was removed from MSDN and now all APIs say they were first introduced in Windows 2000.

Example:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms632679(v=vs.85).aspx

Desktop > Learn > Reference > Windows Application UI Development > Windows and Messages > Windows > Window Reference > Window Functions > CreateWindow

Minimum supported client   Windows 2000 Professional

[Bart]

About Windows 9x Microsoft doesn't even recognize it existed. All information about Windows 9x was removed from MSDN and now all APIs say they were first introduced in Windows 2000.

I'm using WinME, and they "forgot" it even existed when counting versions and ending up with "Winwdows 7" 

Bart

[Frederick]

Looks like I found a bug in VMware. :/ Should have stuck with Parallels.

There is hardly much of a difference between compiling on the Mac and inside the Parallels virtual machine. The VM has mouse integration, network integration, it can share directories, it loads quite fast, doesn't disturb the performance of the system in my macbook and there are even modes to make the programs appear as normal Mac programs if you want that...

That makes a lot of sense. It seems I will need to use Parallels. Too bad so many of my end users use Windows at all. And it's expensive. I'd prefer to be spending the time on Linux. I guess I can do that too with Parallels.

Thanks!

Cheers,
Frederick