"Active Think" theme and Thunderbird

[eharley]

Folks, this seems really strange to me. Wonder if anyone else has noticed a similar problem.

Running XP Pro SP2.

Had to reboot today when changing the name of my workgroup from WORKGROUP to MSHOME so I could print to a shared printer connected to my XP Pro desktop at home. When I booted back up, Thunderbird magically opened all by itself. I clicked on the x to close it, and darned if it didn't open right back up again all by itself. I couldn't get the program to stay closed no matter what I did.

My first response was to install Ad-Aware and run that. Nothing, as I suspected - I use Firefox for browsing, run Windows Firewall, etc. Then I thought about the Windows Update business. Aha! Perhaps Microsoft messed up my computer with a bug in an update that was installed automatically - I'm lazy and just had automatic updating configured.

Next step was to go through and start removing XP Hotfixes via Add/Remove programs. I got about 10 removed (pain in the butt with all the required reboots) when after a reboot my active desktop crashed. I switched it off, and - lo and behold - Thunderbird stopped opening. I could open and close it at will. Amazing.

I have reinstalled the XP Hotfixes and now I can reproduce this. Switch to Active Think theme and Thunderbird opens immediately and won't stay closed. Turn Active Think theme off and Thunderbird does what I tell it to do.

Funny thing about this - the Active Think theme didn't do this when I first switched to it. I know for a fact I rebooted on at least one occasion after switching to Active Think, before the workgroup change I mention above.

I know, active desktops are a horrible waste of resources, don't ever turn them on, blah, blah, blah. But I thought the calendar on the desktop was kinda fun. I'll be fine running without it, obviously, but now I am just curious. So perhaps this has something to do with the way the Active Think desktop tries to report the number of new mail messages, or something?

Thoughts?

[sirius_black_2004]

Hello,

I have the same problem.
Maybe it's something do to with the e-mail notification on the Active Think Theme...

[christopher_wolf]

Yup; I had the same thing happen to me. The Active Think Theme really is *very* active about checking your email. I am guessing that it was intended to hook up to an email program in Lotus and run that job in the background somehow. I couldn't figure out a way to get it to stop bringing up Thunderbird; the only way I could see is to modify various parts of the theme and a certain file that controlled the active background widgets that are displayed on the background, which in turn is an *.html page.

[icantux]

That active theme is evil. HA HA!!! my lappy started freaking out at one point, just like you stated in your post - thunderbird just wouldn't stay closed! Oh well, it was a nice thought to have it on.

I thought at first that an icon (or some invisible script) got stuck on the active desktop that controls program launch... but..

[Legionnaire]

Well there is a solution to this "unfortunate" event:

* use "regedit" to open your registry files.
* locate HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{29F458BE-8866-11D5-A3DD-00B0D0F3BAA7}\LocalServer32
* replace the "default" value with anything (e.g. "abc")
* close the registry files.

This will prevent Thunderbird from opening but I'm afraid you will lose Active Theme Mail Checking functionality.

I am quite dissappointed that IBM did not come up with a simple control-panel (add/remove active components, define mail checking times, etc) for their Active Theme