What to do if you discover a bug
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I have personally used TClockEx on all of my computers (running Windows 95, 98 and now XP Pro) since the very first version, so I am reasonably confident that it performs correctly and has no harmful side-effects.
That said, there are a few issues over which I receive a lot of email. Most are unavoidable due to the operating system configuration.
You have used "DD" in the format string, which represents the day-of-year number. February 1 is the 32nd day of the year. For the day-of-month, you must use lowercase "dd". Note that all of TClockEx's format elements are case-sensitive.
There is a display problem with WinME/2000 when the taskbar is set to auto-hide. I know about this.
This has been reported by a number of people, but I myself am yet to see any sign of time loss that is attributable to TClockEx. After hearing these reports, I disabled the atomic time synchroniser on my computer. After a month, my computer lost two minutes, which is not at all unusual for the notoriously inaccurate PC clock.
The most common reason for time loss is the battery on the motherboard running down. The computer has a battery powered clock on the motherboard that keeps time while the computer is switched off.
If your computer loses chunks of time at random intervals, the most common reason is the computer going into suspend mode. Many computers halt everything, including the clock, when going into suspend mode! Pretty dumb, huh? Try disabling power saving for a few days and see whether that helps.
Finally, if the time loss (or gain) is by exactly an hour, it is almost certainly because of daylight savings kicking in. If it happens when it shouldn't, check your regional settings in the Control Panel. Failing that, use the Time Zone Editor on the Windows 98 CD-ROM to check that your daylight settings are correct. (Windows 95 users will have to download the Kernel Toys from Microsoft to get it.)
In version 1.4.2, under Windows NT, the memory load line colour button is disabled all the time. This will be corrected in the next release.
TCLOCKEX.CPL is a Control Panel applet that allows you to access TClockEx's properties from the Windows Control Panel. It is included in the self-installing EXE distribution but not the ZIP distribution. If you download the ZIP distribution, the Control Panel option in TClockEx Properties will be disabled. This is because the self-installer is needed to make it work properly.
TClockEx may report a "Timeout Error" and fail to load automatically on Windows 98 Second Edition and/or Internet Explorer 5 systems when they boot up. TClockEx may load correctly when started manually. Version 1.4.2 has additional code to work around the problem, but I have not fully tested it. Otherwise try this registry patch. (Click to download, then right-click and click "Install" to install it.)
Beginning with version 1.4, the % symbol is used with user-defined display elements, and must be quoted to override the special meaning, for example: '%'. Older versions don't handle the % symbol very well, but may perform better if you either double it up or quote it as above.
Hint: Make a habit of quoting ALL literal characters in format strings that you don't want expanded, even those that do not have special meanings.
With some display adaptors, particularly those based on older S3 chipsets, the mouse cursor flickers about once a second while TClockEx is running. It appears to be a hardware/driver issue, and I have been unable to either duplicate or resolve this problem. Try getting an updated driver from the manufacturer of your display adaptor.
Lowering the graphics hardware acceleration might help. Start menu - Settings - Control Panel - System - Performance - Graphics. Move the slider one notch left and Apply. Keep doing that until the flickering stops.
If all else fails, now you have an excuse to get that nice new 3D accelerator you always wanted. :-)
This is intentional. CPU usage monitoring under Windows NT/2000 will be enabled in a future version, once I've figured out how to do it.
Unfortunately this is something over which I have little control. To a large extent it depends on your computer's configuration, operating system, hardware setup and other installed programs. ACPI may also be involved.
This is intentional. System, user and GDI resources are specific to Windows 9x systems and are meaningless under Windows NT/2000/XP. The important thing to note here is that this is a Good Thing!
This was caused by an old buggy version of a Windows system file which shipped with early releases of Windows 95. You can download the updated COMCTL32.DLL file from Microsoft's website to fix the problem. For more information, refer to article Q165487 in the Microsoft Knowledgebase. (Hint: Some Microsoft products such as Internet Explorer 4 already include this update, and pretty much any computer built after 1996 is unlikely to be affected by this problem.)
It's not a bug, folks, January 1 1999 really does fall into week #53 of 1998 according to the ISO8601 standard. Week #1 of 1999 starts on January 4 and the three days prior to that belong to week #53 of 1998, as odd as it may seem. Week #1 of any year is defined by ISO8601 as the first week to contain January 4. If you don't like this, take it up with the ISO.
This was meant to be fixed in v1.3.2, but evidently not properly because it still affects some languages, particularly those that use character sets other than the usual ABC.
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