XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Just a curiosity about win10 that might apply to win11 too.

This pertains to what icon shows up in the task bar. For RadioMaximus.

On winPro, it's the one he has used for decades, a white circle with two radiating curved lines. That was also true in my winHome laptop for a
year or two but then it changed to a white 8.5x11 rectangle. I didn't
like that so I made another round icon in the desktop and moved it to
the taskbar, and it magically turned into a rectangle again. That's the
really strange part.

If you look at Propeties and the icons embedded in RadioMaximus, there
is only the white circle. Where it gets the white rectangle and why, I
have really no idea.

Meanwhile in Pro, it's still a circle and has shown no signs of
changing. What is going on with Home?


For more than a decade I've used RadioMaximus, which I recommend highly.
I'm listening to it now, 181.FM Oldies. There is also 181.FM Love
Songs. It has hundreds of webradio stations from all over the world,
sorted by country or genre, and you can add your own if you know the
url, and I think he will put them in the list he gives out if you let
him. It's not dependant on a web browser. You can also record whatever
is playing, and it's all free unless you want to schedule recordings in advance. The paid version is priced very modestly.

On Sundays from 7 to 11, for the last 50+ years, WAMU broadcasts radio
shows from the 50's, and some times I couldn't be home then, so I used
the timed recording to save them for me. Now that particular show, The
Big Broadcast, is on web so I don't need my timed recording as much for
that one, but there are thousands of other programs one might want.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sat, 17 May 2025 07:57:53 -0500, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

For more than a decade I've used RadioMaximus, which I recommend highly.
I'm listening to it now, 181.FM Oldies. There is also 181.FM Love
Songs. It has hundreds of webradio stations from all over the world,
sorted by country or genre, and you can add your own if you know the
url, and I think he will put them in the list he gives out if you let
him. It's not dependant on a web browser. You can also record whatever
is playing, and it's all free unless you want to schedule recordings in advance. The paid version is priced very modestly.

How is it all free?
From what I've seen on their Web site, it's a 14-day Trial version that requires buying a license.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sat, 5/17/2025 8:57 AM, micky wrote:

Just a curiosity about win10 that might apply to win11 too.

This pertains to what icon shows up in the task bar. For RadioMaximus.

On winPro, it's the one he has used for decades, a white circle with two radiating curved lines. That was also true in my winHome laptop for a
year or two but then it changed to a white 8.5x11 rectangle. I didn't
like that so I made another round icon in the desktop and moved it to
the taskbar, and it magically turned into a rectangle again. That's the really strange part.

If you look at Propeties and the icons embedded in RadioMaximus, there
is only the white circle. Where it gets the white rectangle and why, I
have really no idea.

Meanwhile in Pro, it's still a circle and has shown no signs of
changing. What is going on with Home?

For more than a decade I've used RadioMaximus, which I recommend highly.
I'm listening to it now, 181.FM Oldies. There is also 181.FM Love
Songs. It has hundreds of webradio stations from all over the world,
sorted by country or genre, and you can add your own if you know the
url, and I think he will put them in the list he gives out if you let
him. It's not dependant on a web browser. You can also record whatever
is playing, and it's all free unless you want to schedule recordings in advance. The paid version is priced very modestly.

On Sundays from 7 to 11, for the last 50+ years, WAMU broadcasts radio
shows from the 50's, and some times I couldn't be home then, so I used
the timed recording to save them for me. Now that particular show, The
Big Broadcast, is on web so I don't need my timed recording as much for
that one, but there are thousands of other programs one might want.

You can see the ingredients the helper here, blames it on.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-11-random-desktop-icons-turn-white-blank/4a6fcce8-e677-40ee-adab-abf42f7eac31

Sometimes, a user has automation that is "cleaning stuff", and it
is damaging something.

If the file system was not handled cleanly at shutdown, that
would be an opportunity for damage. Does Windows ever roll back
a Registry file completely ? I don't think so. If you made some
changes to the Registry, as the last thing before a reboot,
maybe something could get lost. If you have other things that
point to unreliable storage, perhaps that is a hint at a root cause.

*******

Are you running your Taskbar changing tools, on the affected PC ?
Is that an ingredient ?

While W10 and W11, definitely share some things, there are
also differences between OSes too. I would not automatically
assume, a problem seen on one, has to manifest exactly the same
on the other. For that matter, with A/B testing and dynamically
enabled Features, even two instances of the same OS don't
have to work the same.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 17 May 2025 09:58:33 -0500, "Allan
Higdon" <allanh@vivaldi.net> wrote:

On Sat, 17 May 2025 07:57:53 -0500, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

For more than a decade I've used RadioMaximus, which I recommend highly.
I'm listening to it now, 181.FM Oldies. There is also 181.FM Love
Songs. It has hundreds of webradio stations from all over the world,
sorted by country or genre, and you can add your own if you know the
url, and I think he will put them in the list he gives out if you let
him. It's not dependant on a web browser. You can also record whatever
is playing, and it's all free unless you want to schedule recordings in
advance. The paid version is priced very modestly.

How is it all free?
From what I've seen on their Web site, it's a 14-day Trial version that requires buying a license.

Sorry. That was my recollection, but I got it 10 or 20 years ago and I
could have been forgotten. (Since I got it primarily for timed
recording, maybe I ignored that for free, it had only a trial period.)
Or I used to be right and he's changed his terms. I'm sure these guys
get tired of giving their stuff away for free.

In that case I'll tell you more, esp. things you may not notice in the
first 30 days.

Good things.
It also has many podcasts. I dont' know enough about podcasts to know if
it has all of them.

You can play several things at once, listening to one and recording
others (though how often does one really want to do that?)

It has many, many foreign stations, some internet only, mostly music,
but if you speak their local language there will be talk too. It's also
sorted by country: For example, 31 stations from Guatemala, 24 stations
from Israel which has only 8 million people.

And by genre. 27 stations for 50's music. NO category called the 40's
and maybe no stations. I wanted that once and was disappointed.
28 comedy stations. We could use some laughter.
Not many commercials on 181.FM Oldies and I recorded 36 hours of them,
deleted the few artists that I don't like, and the small number of
commercials, and copied them all to a flashdrive and took it with me on vacation. As I recall, before copying I had to sort them by date/time
and in ascending order, or the first 10 seconds of each song got
attached to the previous song, or something worse than that like
attached to the next song, but changing the sort order as it appeared in
the file manager fixed it.

And you can make favorites and display only them and and it's so
convenient to change stations, instead of having to open another tab,
turn off the prior tab in a browswer.


More about what's not so hot about it, in no particular order.

The stations already included may be dependant on which ones users
wanted, or something. For example WAMU, an NPR station, only has its
bluegrass station included, not the news/talking etc. Same with WYPR.
And not the fault of radiomax, I learned elswhere that there is too
much similarity, simultaneity, between what NPR stations carry around.
the country, at least at night and late at night. Even famous
independent hi-brow stations in Chicago, NYC, Philly, and Boston, or 2
or 3 of those (I can no longer remember the station names (WBZ?) WAIB?),
seem to have joined NPR That's not to say there aren't locally
broadcast NPR shows that would be different, but I didn't know what
times they were on. I was just looking for something different because
I didn't like what was on the first NPR station, and every one I tried
had the same thing, at least when I was trying to fall asleep.

I thought I could take any webaudio window, ones that did nothing but
play music for example, and use its url to make a new entry in radiomax,
but one worked and 2 or 3 that I tried didn't work. I could have written
to the station to learn the URL but I didn't and i don't know how often
writing to them works.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 17 May 2025 10:29:33 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 5/17/2025 8:57 AM, micky wrote:

Just a curiosity about win10 that might apply to win11 too.

This pertains to what icon shows up in the task bar. For RadioMaximus.

On winPro, it's the one he has used for decades, a white circle with two
radiating curved lines. That was also true in my winHome laptop for a
year or two but then it changed to a white 8.5x11 rectangle. I didn't
like that so I made another round icon in the desktop and moved it to
the taskbar, and it magically turned into a rectangle again. That's the
really strange part.

If you look at Propeties and the icons embedded in RadioMaximus, there
is only the white circle. Where it gets the white rectangle and why, I
have really no idea.

Meanwhile in Pro, it's still a circle and has shown no signs of
changing. What is going on with Home?


For more than a decade I've used RadioMaximus, which I recommend highly.
I'm listening to it now, 181.FM Oldies. There is also 181.FM Love
Songs. It has hundreds of webradio stations from all over the world,
sorted by country or genre, and you can add your own if you know the
url, and I think he will put them in the list he gives out if you let
him. It's not dependant on a web browser. You can also record whatever
is playing, and it's all free unless you want to schedule recordings in
advance. The paid version is priced very modestly.

On Sundays from 7 to 11, for the last 50+ years, WAMU broadcasts radio
shows from the 50's, and some times I couldn't be home then, so I used
the timed recording to save them for me. Now that particular show, The
Big Broadcast, is on web so I don't need my timed recording as much for
that one, but there are thousands of other programs one might want.

You can see the ingredients the helper here, blames it on.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-11-random-desktop-icons-turn-white-blank/4a6fcce8-e677-40ee-adab-abf42f7eac31

I'm impressed that you found almost the exact same problem. It IS the
same problem but for me it's the taskbar and not the desktop. When the
taskbar icon changed to a white page, the desktop icon stayed the same,
and the old and new ones are still correct (I only created a second one
because maybe the first one had bad blood!)

None of the causes he speculated apply to me.

Sometimes, a user has automation that is "cleaning stuff", and it
is damaging something.

I don't have any cleaning running ever.

If the file system was not handled cleanly at shutdown, that
would be an opportunity for damage. Does Windows ever roll back
a Registry file completely ? I don't think so. If you made some
changes to the Registry, as the last thing before a reboot,
maybe something could get lost. If you have other things that
point to unreliable storage, perhaps that is a hint at a root cause.

I don't think so but this happened months ago and I didn't have time to
post then. .

*******

Are you running your Taskbar changing tools, on the affected PC ?
Is that an ingredient ?

Open Shell, that's all.

While W10 and W11, definitely share some things, there are
also differences between OSes too. I would not automatically
assume, a problem seen on one, has to manifest exactly the same
on the other. For that matter, with A/B testing and dynamically
enabled Features, even two instances of the same OS don't
have to work the same.

The problem is that windows is too complicated. I'll let you know when
my project is ready. I'm working on an abacus that can display videos.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sat, 5/17/2025 8:21 PM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 17 May 2025 10:29:33 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 5/17/2025 8:57 AM, micky wrote:

Just a curiosity about win10 that might apply to win11 too.

This pertains to what icon shows up in the task bar. For RadioMaximus.

On winPro, it's the one he has used for decades, a white circle with two >>> radiating curved lines. That was also true in my winHome laptop for a
year or two but then it changed to a white 8.5x11 rectangle. I didn't
like that so I made another round icon in the desktop and moved it to
the taskbar, and it magically turned into a rectangle again. That's the >>> really strange part.

If you look at Propeties and the icons embedded in RadioMaximus, there
is only the white circle. Where it gets the white rectangle and why, I
have really no idea.

Meanwhile in Pro, it's still a circle and has shown no signs of
changing. What is going on with Home?


For more than a decade I've used RadioMaximus, which I recommend highly. >>> I'm listening to it now, 181.FM Oldies. There is also 181.FM Love
Songs. It has hundreds of webradio stations from all over the world,
sorted by country or genre, and you can add your own if you know the
url, and I think he will put them in the list he gives out if you let
him. It's not dependant on a web browser. You can also record whatever
is playing, and it's all free unless you want to schedule recordings in
advance. The paid version is priced very modestly.

On Sundays from 7 to 11, for the last 50+ years, WAMU broadcasts radio
shows from the 50's, and some times I couldn't be home then, so I used
the timed recording to save them for me. Now that particular show, The
Big Broadcast, is on web so I don't need my timed recording as much for
that one, but there are thousands of other programs one might want.

You can see the ingredients the helper here, blames it on.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-11-random-desktop-icons-turn-white-blank/4a6fcce8-e677-40ee-adab-abf42f7eac31

I'm impressed that you found almost the exact same problem. It IS the
same problem but for me it's the taskbar and not the desktop. When the taskbar icon changed to a white page, the desktop icon stayed the same,
and the old and new ones are still correct (I only created a second one because maybe the first one had bad blood!)

None of the causes he speculated apply to me.

Sometimes, a user has automation that is "cleaning stuff", and it
is damaging something.

I don't have any cleaning running ever.

If the file system was not handled cleanly at shutdown, that
would be an opportunity for damage. Does Windows ever roll back
a Registry file completely ? I don't think so. If you made some
changes to the Registry, as the last thing before a reboot,
maybe something could get lost. If you have other things that
point to unreliable storage, perhaps that is a hint at a root cause.

I don't think so but this happened months ago and I didn't have time to
post then. .

*******

Are you running your Taskbar changing tools, on the affected PC ?
Is that an ingredient ?

Open Shell, that's all.

While W10 and W11, definitely share some things, there are
also differences between OSes too. I would not automatically
assume, a problem seen on one, has to manifest exactly the same
on the other. For that matter, with A/B testing and dynamically
enabled Features, even two instances of the same OS don't
have to work the same.

The problem is that windows is too complicated. I'll let you know when
my project is ready. I'm working on an abacus that can display videos.

The Taskbar row, likely has two components.

It would use the iconcache for the program icon in the bar.
When you hover over the icon, it shows you thumbnails of the
program windows. Those could be kept in separate caches.

The iconcache, could get upset, if a program "updates itself",
and there is some versioning mechanism the cache uses, and any
custom association could get lost that way. It likely wasn't
designed to keep a custom icon reference, every time the software
is upgraded/updated.

If it's just the program icon in the taskbar, and not all the
data files using that icon get changed to a rectangle, then it
likely isn't a default file association which has changed.

It makes you wonder sometimes, how much better or worst it would
work, if there were no caches at all. I've seen one comment that
claims the TurboJPEG library the OS uses is so fast, it can make
a thumbnail faster than the .db file can do a lookup :-) Which
is sad indeed. The reversal of the situation, comes with PDF
documents, where a thumbnail created there is expensive, and
caching is a better thing to do for that one. Not everyone has
PDF thumbnails set up (you need a "provider" to do that).

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 17 May 2025 22:28:06 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 5/17/2025 8:21 PM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 17 May 2025 10:29:33 -0400, Paul
<nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 5/17/2025 8:57 AM, micky wrote:

Just a curiosity about win10 that might apply to win11 too.

This pertains to what icon shows up in the task bar. For RadioMaximus. >>>>
On winPro, it's the one he has used for decades, a white circle with two >>>> radiating curved lines. That was also true in my winHome laptop for a >>>> year or two but then it changed to a white 8.5x11 rectangle. I didn't >>>> like that so I made another round icon in the desktop and moved it to
the taskbar, and it magically turned into a rectangle again. That's the >>>> really strange part.

If you look at Propeties and the icons embedded in RadioMaximus, there >>>> is only the white circle. Where it gets the white rectangle and why, I >>>> have really no idea.

Meanwhile in Pro, it's still a circle and has shown no signs of
changing. What is going on with Home?


For more than a decade I've used RadioMaximus, which I recommend highly. >>>> I'm listening to it now, 181.FM Oldies. There is also 181.FM Love
Songs. It has hundreds of webradio stations from all over the world,
sorted by country or genre, and you can add your own if you know the
url, and I think he will put them in the list he gives out if you let
him. It's not dependant on a web browser. You can also record whatever >>>> is playing, and it's all free unless you want to schedule recordings in >>>> advance. The paid version is priced very modestly.

On Sundays from 7 to 11, for the last 50+ years, WAMU broadcasts radio >>>> shows from the 50's, and some times I couldn't be home then, so I used >>>> the timed recording to save them for me. Now that particular show, The >>>> Big Broadcast, is on web so I don't need my timed recording as much for >>>> that one, but there are thousands of other programs one might want.

You can see the ingredients the helper here, blames it on.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-11-random-desktop-icons-turn-white-blank/4a6fcce8-e677-40ee-adab-abf42f7eac31

I'm impressed that you found almost the exact same problem. It IS the
same problem but for me it's the taskbar and not the desktop. When the
taskbar icon changed to a white page, the desktop icon stayed the same,
and the old and new ones are still correct (I only created a second one
because maybe the first one had bad blood!)

None of the causes he speculated apply to me.

Sometimes, a user has automation that is "cleaning stuff", and it
is damaging something.

I don't have any cleaning running ever.

If the file system was not handled cleanly at shutdown, that
would be an opportunity for damage. Does Windows ever roll back
a Registry file completely ? I don't think so. If you made some
changes to the Registry, as the last thing before a reboot,
maybe something could get lost. If you have other things that
point to unreliable storage, perhaps that is a hint at a root cause.

I don't think so but this happened months ago and I didn't have time to
post then. .

*******

Are you running your Taskbar changing tools, on the affected PC ?
Is that an ingredient ?

Open Shell, that's all.

While W10 and W11, definitely share some things, there are
also differences between OSes too. I would not automatically
assume, a problem seen on one, has to manifest exactly the same
on the other. For that matter, with A/B testing and dynamically
enabled Features, even two instances of the same OS don't
have to work the same.

The problem is that windows is too complicated. I'll let you know when
my project is ready. I'm working on an abacus that can display videos.

The Taskbar row, likely has two components.

It would use the iconcache for the program icon in the bar.
When you hover over the icon, it shows you thumbnails of the
program windows. Those could be kept in separate caches.

The iconcache, could get upset, if a program "updates itself",
and there is some versioning mechanism the cache uses, and any
custom association could get lost that way. It likely wasn't
designed to keep a custom icon reference, every time the software
is upgraded/updated.

FWIW, he doesn't update the program more than once a year, and I hadn't
updated it for 10 or 15 years, and I've only updated it once in the past
year, and all this stuff happened after the last update.

If it's just the program icon in the taskbar, and not all the
data files using that icon get changed to a rectangle, then it

In my file manager, the exe has the original proper icon. Eight other
exe's that I don't call directly all have various icons that I never see
(3 of them with bright red circles!) and of course t here are many data
files in various directories that do have a blank page for their icon,
but I think they always did.

I may have to call Bill Gates. He really is a friend of mine. (said
Perry Mason)

likely isn't a default file association which has changed.

It makes you wonder sometimes, how much better or worst it would
work, if there were no caches at all. I've seen one comment that
claims the TurboJPEG library the OS uses is so fast, it can make
a thumbnail faster than the .db file can do a lookup :-) Which
is sad indeed. The reversal of the situation, comes with PDF
documents, where a thumbnail created there is expensive, and
caching is a better thing to do for that one. Not everyone has
PDF thumbnails set up (you need a "provider" to do that).

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)