Monitor Profile Error Window

[edk]

I recently created a new monitor profile. It works fine & is recognized by all of my other software except PWP7 which shows an error window at start up "Cannot locate monitor profile". That is not the worst of it!! There is no way to close or otherwise bypass that window and as a result PWP is unusable.

I'm reasonably well versed in color management. One tool I use regularly is the X-Rite DisplayProfile.exe which identifies the profile in use by the operating system (Win 7 here). You drag the DP.exe window over a monitor and it show the profile ID in place for the monitor. The tool as well as three image editing programs (PS, LR, & QImage) all know what & where the profile is. Can you tell me what the problem is with PWP - and more importantly what I can do to ever run the program again. :-(

I rebooted my system - no luck. I completely uninstalled PWP, downloaded the new release, reinstalled and still no luck. I thought this latter 30 minute exercise would do the trick by clearing whatever file it was using with an embedded, erroneous monitor profile ID. I was wrong. Why can't PWP, when all else fails, use the profile that is made available to all ICC color aware programs and move on - not disable the program with no way out???

Very disappointed having to waste nearly two hours chasing after a solution. TIA for getting me back in business....

[jsachs]

To clear the monitor profile setting you will need to use the registry editor. Click the Start button and enter regedit into the box at the bottom of the start menu to bring up the registry editor. Next expand the registry tree to locate: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Digital Light and Color\Picture Window\Color Settings and locate monitorprofile in the right hand pane. Double click on the monitorprofile to see the current setting (the full pathname of the selected monitor profile) and write it down. Change the current value to "". This will set the monitor profile to None.

I have fixed the problem of the program hanging when it fails to find the monitor profile and the fix should show up in the next maintenance release. In the meantime, check that the file that was specified in monitorprofile does indeed exist. If not, try again to set the monitor profile in PWP and you should be OK. If it does exist, please email me a copy and I will look into it. Also, please let me know what version of PWP you are using (jsachs@dl-c.com). I will be away 8/28 thru 9/18, so if you can email it soon I can figure out what is wrong before I go.

[edk]

OK. Immediate problem solved - I can now again run PWP. Using regedit, I found the name of the profile PWP had hard-wired into its startup routine. When I created the new profile - the one everything else understands & uses without any intervention on my part - I moved all of the old profiles to a backup folder. This should have made no difference (IMO) to PWP - and it did to none of the other programs nor Win 7 - since the correct profile was right where it was supposed to be in C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color. Every other program knew what the current monitor profile was and had no trouble.

Having found which profile PWP insisted it must have, I copied that profile back to C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color. Now when I start PWP it works as expected.

Hanging with no way out is a serious problem.

The profile PWP was looking for, as explained above, wasn't in C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color any longer. Why is PWP the only program that hard-wires a profile with no fall-back to the profile that ever other ICC-aware program would normally use?

The PWP version I was using before uninstalling was the original PWP7 release. After uninstalling, downloading and reinstalling it was the 8/15 upgrade. Same difference either way.

I understand the use of a fixed set(s) of saved color management options as PWP uses. What I don't understand is PWP's behavior when one of the specified CM parameters presets is no longer valid. The default response has to be better than show the user an error window that can't be closed nor over-ridden. The only way to stop PWP was via the Task Manager stop processes option. Totally unsat.

One last complaint - the entire reason for my going through the trouble of uninstalling PWP7 as my first attempt at resolving the issue was my belief (hope??) that the old profile would be gone after the uninstall. Obviously the uninstall does nothing to clean up the registry behind itself. This should be fixed as well.

[jsachs]

The problem was that the dialog box containing the error message was showing up too small to show the OK button which - if you could have clicked it - would have let the program continue with a default setting. As I mentioned in my previous post, this has been fixed already for the next maintenance release.

All profiles must be located in C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color - this is the standard location for profiles under Windows and the only place programs look for profiles.

Generally programs do not erase registry keys on an uninstall as these settings will be restored if you re-install later or install a newer version after uninstalling an older one.

[edk]

The problem was that the dialog box containing the error message was showing up too small to show the OK button which - if you could have clicked it - would have let the program continue with a default setting. As I mentioned in my previous post, this has been fixed already for the next maintenance release.

All profiles must be located in C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color - this is the standard location for profiles under Windows and the only place programs look for profiles.

Generally programs do not erase registry keys on an uninstall as these settings will be restored if you re-install later or install a newer version after uninstalling an older one.

"All profiles must be located ...." - I guess this is where my problem originates. I was taking the approach that the "current" profile is the only profile - it is for all other programs I'm aware of. This being the case I "cleaned up" because the clutter was was too much. I obviously failed to account for the fact that PWP's view of the "current" profile depends on the current PWP CM option that was set the last time PWP closed. Mea culpa. Giving an exit from the error window should render this misunderstanding moot.

Leaving ALL registry keys "as is" seems to be a dubious practice - Just my opinion obviously. I clearly need to start sweeping the registry more often since assuming programs do it themselves is a bad assumption.

I'm glad that the error window will eventually get fixed. I must note that the "too small" problem seems to be common since that was exactly the answer given after the release of 7 to the question "where's the out of gamut"?

Thanks for your quick reply & help.

[jsachs]

Incidentally, in PWP 7.x, there is a new setting in Color Management to allow setting the monitor profile automatically from the official Windows monitor profile setting on startup. If you use this, PWP will get the setting the way most other programs do it and the setting should automatically track updates generated by re-profiling your monitor. I'm not sure that removing the monitor profile from the Windows profile folder will work, however as this is a scenario we did not envision.

A number of window too small problems were exposed when we allowed for changing the font size in File/Preferences. Hopefully we have fixed most of them by now.

[edk]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I do use the latest & greatest Win 7 CM options designed to solve profile problems which were rampant in Vista (which I fortunately skipped). However, I'm paranoid enough about the potential for problems that I run the little X-Rite DisplayProfile.exe utility I mentioned earlier almost once a day. It starts instantly, places a very small window on a monitor which displays which profile Win is using for that monitor - and when you drag the window on to another monitor the profile ID switches to match the new monitor. Here's a recent post on my daily blog that discusses monitor profiles and illustrates the X-Rite tool. http://edknepleyphoto.com/2013/08/15/so ... uter-know/

What caught me by surprise is that I leave CM enabled in PWP but didn't anticipate the ramifications of the specified profile not being available between one shutdown of PWP and the next startup. Since I never use more than one monitor profile, that won't happen again. In the past each monthly profile was given a new name but left in the standard Win profile folder. However, I recently bought a new profiling system and decided to go with a single monitor name (without assigning a new one to match the month). At the same time, I moved all of the old profiles to a new folder to reduce clutter as with dual monitors they pile up fast (but didn't delete them - guess I was anticipating a future problem that PWP presented).

Bottom line, as long as PWP knows where to look for Win's "standard" profile AND as long as the user can respond to the error window I, for one, won't have any problems. Might I suggest though that you add to the error window - in addition to the profile can't be found - the name of the missing profile. The trip to regedit provide to me that was so helpful. If I knew what PWP was looking for (I had dozens of old profiles squirreled away) I could have moved it to the standard Win folder in a few seconds & needn't have bothered you. In my case, I wasn't even sure which of my monitors was in question, much less which profile for that monitor. Just a thought.

As for envisioning every scenario - nothing will ever be fool proof because we fools are too clever for that. ;-)