General Computer Help Needed

Hi - I have been programming in BlitzMax for about 5 months now. I have a couple of general problems/annoyances I'm sure could be solved if I had the knowledge. Would someone please help me with how I can :-

1) Quit from one of my Blitz programs that has crashed - but displays a blank screen. Sometimes I can tell that the rest of the system is still working in the background but because I can't see anything I can't do anything - and I have to turn the computer off and restart. I have tried Alt_tab and Ctrl_alt-delete. Is there a way to terminate a process directly - a key combination?

2) when I work on my computer programming I usually have about 3-4 internet explorer windows open, a couple of NotePads, the volume control, BlitzMax, A file explorer window (with the folder icon), and an art package.

Is there a quick way - some kind of macro I can implement to automatically open all this stuff with a key press when I first switch on the computer in the day? I use someone else's laptop with the same user name - so it needs to be a key press or something I can select (an icon) that does this.

I'd really appreciate if anyone can help me with how I can solve these problems. They have been annoying me for ages! Thank you :)

Well idk about the first problem, as I am a Blitz Plus user, but for the second problem, you could just write a program that opens all of those programs using the ExecFile command.

Then whenever you want to start working, you could just click on an icon on your desktop, and open Blitz, Notepad, and your browser x times.

1. Sounds like there's a bug in your program.

2. Use a batchfile.

Ok I will look into execfile and batchfile - I presume I can just google them to find out how to do this. Thank you.

It is a bug in my program - but it is just when a normal runtime error occurs - I hear the error requester come up (it has a sound effect) but the screen remains black. Normally when this happens the error requester appears and I click on OK - then the program/process shuts down and I return to the Blitz IDE. I need to somehow automatically shut down the current process. Ctrl-ALt-Del brings up the program manager - which I also can't see.

Thanks for the help.

1) If you still see the IDE in the background, you can hit the 'stop' sign in the IDE toolbar which will kill the running blitzmax program. alternatively, you can pull up the task manager by pressing CTRL-Shift-Esc, and either end-task the application, or the BMK process in the process list.

If using BLIde, just wait some seconds and BLIde will recover it for you. Nothing else needed.

Ok - Thank you :)

I am currently trying to write the batch file to automatically run BlitzIDE, notepad and the Master Volume register (which comes up when you double click on the small speaker icon on the Task bar).

I have got Blitz and notepad opening up - but i don't know the .exe file for the Master Volume control - does anyone else?

*EDIT*

My batch file looks like this:

"C:\Program Files\BlitzMax\MaxIDE.exe"
notepad
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"

Its not working too well - it only loads up each succesive program when I close the previous one - which is no good. e.g. it loads BlitzIDE and then does nothing until I close the IDE - whereupon it runs notepad. Also the command line window remains open.

Thanks for any help - I am not very knowledgeable on this subject.