On Virtual Desktops

Some time back, I mentioned the suckiness of MSVDM. For those who don't know, MSVDM is Microsoft's Virtual Desktop Manager. It's one of the "Power Toys" for Windows XP, and is basically a poor copy of the virtual desktop pagers that have been available in UNIX window managers for years. It's basically an unnecessarily large label with five buttons after it: a "preview" button that shows nice, scaled previews of all the desktops and lets you select one, and then one button to switch to each of the four available desktops. Incidentally, Microsoft applied for a patent related to this.

The first time I heard of this, I thought it sounded great. I've been completely hooked on virtual desktops ever since I started using them in AfterStep. This is probably due to the fact the virtual desktop handling in AfterStep (and most UNIX window managers, for that matter) is quite good. In AfterStep, you can configure virtually every aspect of virtual desktops, from number of desktops and pages to which applications open on which deskotp. It also has a really nice pager program.

I continued using virtual desktops when I switched to Sawfish and ROX, and then when I switched then to KDE, although the quality of virtual desktop support was reduced with each change. KDE's virtual desktop support is OK, but not nearly as nice as AfterStep's. However, it's still a lot better than what Microsoft has.

Unless you've used both MSVDM and the pagers for UNIX window managers, it's hard to describe how truly bad MSVDM is. For one thing, that big "MSVDM" label takes up a lot of space in the taskbar, and as far as I know, there's no setting to turn it off. (Edit: actually, you can - see the comment here.) Sure, you can do what I did and hack the DLL in a hex editor (the string is at 0x71C, and you can't make it NULL - the first character has to be something, e.g. a pipe |), but the point is, you shouldn't have to. Although on the up side, they did provide configuration dialogs to change the hotkeys and per-desktop wallpaper.

The second crumby thing about MSVDM is that it has a nasty tendency to screw things up. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but it appears to involve minimizing windows and hiding their taskbar entries when you leave a desktop. How do I know this? Because you can see the windows and taskbar icons flash. Not that that bothers me - it's just the programs that aren't restored correctly that get on my nerves. For example, using Visual Basic 6 in SDI mode seriously screws up the display when you switch back to it. Basically, you end up with a bunch of empty borders where child windows should be. Plus Visual Studio .NET doesn't come back at the right size if you had it maximized. And did I mention that if you're doing any heavy processing in the background, it has a tendency to temporarily freeze up between switches, leaving you caught in desktop limbo? Or that the Visual Basic .NET upgrade wizard crashes if you switch desktops while it's running? And let's not forget how it loses the toolbar in Excel.

So, basically, the only things that MSVDM has going for it are that it's free and marginally better than nothing. In fact, many of the "Power Toys" seem to work that way. That wouldn't be a problem if they were open-source, because I could just fix them. But that's not the Microsoft Way. Sigh.... That's why I've switched to VirtuaWin.

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Comments #

    There are a few free software desktop managers for MS Windows

    Hi, the MS virtual desktops can be annoying, but there are many more, some of them free software. I have tried several and those that I quite like are:

    http://VirtuaWin.SourceForge.net/
    http://WWW.Yipton.Demon.co.UK/content.html#DESKWIN

    I currently use VirtuaWin, after trying quite a few.

    Thanks for the tip!

    I'll have to check those two out at work tomorrow. They sound fairly good from the web pages.

    It's good to know there are some free alternatives out there. Last time I looked for virtual desktop managers for Windows XP, pretty much everything I found was commercial. It didn't occur to me to search SourceForge, though. (Not that I ever search SourceForge anyway, since half of the projects are forever stuck in the pre-alpha phase and never release any files. But that's an entirely different rant.)

    Virtial Desktops and Excel

    If there is an Excel window and you return back to this desktop, Excel's toolbar is missing... And you can only close it and call it again...

    MSVDM and Excel

    Dimo,

    I don't use Excel too much, but I just tried it out with MSVDM. I see the same problem, but I found that if I minimize Excel, switch desktops, switch back, and then restor Excel, the toolbars come back. I've seen this work with other programs (e.g. Visual Studio), but I have no idea why it works that way.

    Incidentally, I recommend following Blissex's advice and checking out VirtuaWin. I just installed it with the "cool desktop switcher" module this morning, and it's hard to put into words how much better it is than MSVDM. Kudos to Blissex for mentioning it!

    No Subject

    You said, "For one thing, that big "MSVDM" label takes up a lot of space in the taskbar, and as far as I know, there's no setting to turn it off."

    I'm sorry that you had to hex edit the title away... because there is a way to turn it off. The method isn't obvious though, maybe that's why you missed it.

    The key is to right-click on the taskbar, and disable the option "Lock the Taskbar". Then you can right click on the MSVDM toolbar, and uncheck the option "Show Title".

    Good tip

    That's good to know. It never occurred to me that unocking the taskbar would make any difference. Not that it matters anymore, since I've switched to VirtuaWin, which is about 10,000 times better than MSVDM. The only thing it doesn't have is that nifty scaled-screen switcher, which I never used anyway.

    Hmm

    MSVDM seems to like to not display wallpapers after you switch desktops...I get a black screen from switching from one to another, and refreshing the desktop does nothing. To fix, I have to reselect the wallpaper and apply it via Control Panel. I wonder if its just me or if it has something to do with having more than one display adapter.

    Ironically enough, I found this page looking for a solution for the problem. Guess I'll be switching!

    Thanks!

    I have been using MSVDM (My Sh*tty Virtual Desktop Manager) for a while now, and I just noticed that problem in excel and word both. So, I jumped on google to find out if there was an update of more help on it, found this and I'm switching to virtuaWin also! Sweet! Much luck to you all!

    It's not just you

    MSVDM loses the background image switching between desktops on all 4 systems I tried it in. I'm giving up on this; MS isn't serious about it, they haven't updated it in 2 years and the bugs are obvious and frequent.

    Recovering MSVDM desktop background images

    The images are usually kept here: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temp

    The files are these:

    MSVDM-Desktop0.bmp
    MSVDM-Desktop1.bmp
    MSVDM-Desktop2.bmp
    MSVDM-Desktop3.bmp
    MSVDM-Preview.bmp

    removing and re-installing the powertoy did not put these back, nor did re-running the Configure Desktop Images. I had to recover the images from a backup. The files are all 1,407 KB. Once I put them back in that location, my VDM desktop backgrounds were OK again and followed the desktop switching.

    Its easy for the learning the 'Multi-PC'

    The Virtual desktop is very smart tools in XP. I think this is the concept for the "MultiPC", which is very popular within the contemporary users of the Windows. I think Windows has no objection to make the Virtual Desktop. Its true, funny and useful for us.

    RE: Recovering MSVDM desktop background images

    First, I would like to thank the folks for posting the two useful tip about "hidding the name" and "missing excel menus." ...I will be posting this information with links to this page on my blog.

    It's a shame that Microsoft doesn't provide better documentation for MSVDM. I was hacking the background images myself, until I found right mouse click on the MSVDM toolbar > Configure Desktop Images. This option allows you change the background images for each desktop.

    NOTE: YOU MUST RIGHT CLICK "ON" THE MSVDM TOOLBAR TO OPEN THE MENU OPTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH THE MSVDM.

    Multihead

    And how well does it work with multi-headed displays? Go on, just guess.

    Awesome!

    Badly?! (in reply to above - just a guess)

    Just a note to say how GREAT VirtuaWin is in comparison to XP's poor attempt at virtual desktops, too right linux has been doing this well for years - whose betting something similar will appear in Vista? (not that i've looked)

    The best bit is moving the mouse across the screens - slightly disturbing at first but its great once you get use to it :))

    Wallpaper disappearing fix....

    I know this is an old post but -

    After reading this, I realized that my wallpaper files were being deleted from the TEMP directory(C:\Documents and Settings\*USER NAME*\Local Settings\Temp) by CCleaner. I put those files int he exclude list and it works fine now. I no longer lose the background images.

    Just thought it might help some people.

    you can solve if the wallpapers disapear

    Hi, if after a cleaning, you have lost your wallpapers, you can do the following: at first you select none for all the four wallpapers in "configure your desktop images", after that you close reboot your system and you choose again your wallpapers, and that´s all, it will work again.

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