Ok, I think I may have found the cause of some of the cases reported of Scrivener hanging on start up.
I did this on an HP Pavilion G7 running Windows 7 Home Premium, Version 6.1, Build 7600 (but I am pretty sure it will work on any computer and in Windows XP as well, I will explain in a minute) This is a new computer, so there aren’t very many programs on it that did not come with the system (I have only installed Google Chrome, OpenOffice, Scrivener, Photoshop Elements 5, and Audacity)
- pin a Scrivener shortcut to the taskbar.
- click on the icon rapidly 3 times or more (basically get a little over zealous with a double click)
- Scrivener comes up with with the “Scrivener is unregistered” dialog box. Click on “try”: Scrivener is now “Not Responding”.
I believe I did the same thing with Scrivener on my old computer running Windows XP: I put Scrivener on the quick launch toolbar, then double clicked instead of single clicked to start Scrivener on a few occasions. It did seem to hang, but at the time I had assumed it was my computer because It had issues. With the same thing happening on the new computer when I click more times than necessary to launch the program from the task bar in Windows 7, I am thinking that it was the result of clicking more times than necessary to start Scrivener from the quick launch in Windows XP.
It is almost as if it is trying to start more than one copy of, not only Scrivener, but the dialog box as well; and then waiting for a response to the second dialog box that the user cannot make (as it is not displayed)
I don’t believe it is simply a case of having two instances of Scrivener open at the same time, as this doesn’t seem to be a problem: I get two instances of Scrivener running whenever I open one project with out first closing another (though I can’t be certain, as I only do this to move from one project to another, and then close the first instance of Scrivener as soon as the next project is open). Scrivener seems to be fine with this. The problem only seems to occur when trying to open more than one instance of Scrivener as a result of too many clicks on the task bar in Windows 7 or the Quick launch toolbar in Windows XP.
I am guessing that the problem would not occur with a registered copy of Scrivener, as the dialog box in question would no longer be an issue.
This happens every time the shortcut is clicked too many times. I just tried it with the desktop short cut, with the same result. It also happens when I try to launch Scrivener while my computer is still doing it’s startup if I get impatient and try to launch the program a second time because Scrivener hasn’t started yet.
The fix is simple: Allow the system to close Scrivener, then slow down: click only the number of times needed to open scrivener for whichever short cut you are using, and be patient; let Scrivener open.
I hope this helps, Lunarclipper