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Task pane glitch

Question asked by Kevin Gilrein on Aug 10, 2017
Latest reply on Aug 15, 2017 by Deepak Gupta

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I have a very strange issue with Solidworks on my computer.

As you can see, the task pane that usually resides on the right side of the screen is gone, and instead a chunk of it is floating in the middle of my screen. It has been like this for weeks now, I have tried deactivating and reactivating it and I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling Solidworks and nothing has worked so far.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Deepak Gupta Aug 10, 2017 12:05 PM

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Looks like registry setting for the task pane has been changed. Well you might want to try the reset registry method: Resetting the SOLIDWORKS registry

Make sure you take backs up for your settings and other files/templates.

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Deepak Gupta Aug 10, 2017 12:05 PM
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Looks like registry setting for the task pane has been changed. Well you might want to try the reset registry method: Resetting the SOLIDWORKS registry

Make sure you take backs up for your settings and other files/templates.
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- Kevin Gilrein @ Deepak Gupta on Aug 10, 2017 1:56 PM
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  This worked, thank you!
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John Sweeney Aug 10, 2017 12:43 PM
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Hi Kevin,
It looks your taskpane has been undocked and it is floating.   The window has an "auto collapse" option where unpinning it will allow the floating window to autocollapse and only show the tabs and header. It should look like this:

Normally, you can redock it by dragging the window header, double-clicking the header, or clicking the icon in the top-right. However, your window size appears to be messed up so these actions might not work for you.

You can try grabbing the bottom edge or bottom corner of the floating window to resize it to expose the header area. If that doesn't work, try toggling the display of the taskpane using "View-Toolbars-Taskpane" menu item to turn it off and the back on. However, the window size is written to the registry so this toggling probably won't help.

As a last resort, you can reset the full registry as Deepak mentions above, or you can try to manually edit your registry to "fix" the taskpane window size by renaming the reg key below:

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS 2017\User Interface\General-Bar-59465]

to something like

   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS 2017\User Interface\General-Bar-59465_BADKEY]

Before using "regedit.exe" for the manual rename action, be sure to close SolidWorks and then restart it after you've completed the rename. Please be aware that manually editing the registry can cause serious problems with your computer if you don't do it correctly. You can create a backup ahead of time using the File-Export menu item in the regedit tool.

I hope this helps,
John
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- Deepak Gupta @ John Sweeney on Aug 11, 2017 12:43 AM
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  John, is there any document that can suggest as which registry key is for which toolbar. For e.g. I could not find the registry key for task pane so suggested Kevin to do full SOLIDWORKS registry reset (but other reason was that he had already reinstalled)
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  - John Sweeney @ Deepak Gupta on Aug 15, 2017 12:41 AM
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    Hi Deepak,
    No, we don't publish anything that would help you align the registry keys with an actual toolbar. However, if you believe there is a problem with a specific piece of UI customization (ie: toolbar layout, taskpane sizing, dialogs somewhere off-screen, etc.), you have a few choices.
    
    You can reset every setting back to "out of the box" values by renaming the base registry key as described in Resetting the SOLIDWORKS registry. As you're aware, the downside with this approach is you lose all customization including UI and system settings.
    You can try to reset specific sections of the registry by using one of our dialogs. For example, Tools-Customize-Toolbars-Reset... should restore toolbars to their default ("out of the box") state.
    You can use the "Copy Settings Wizard" application to save all the "good" pieces of your registry along with #1 above. For example, these steps would let you reset only a piece of your registry:
    Run "START MENU-All Programs-SolidWorks XXXX-SolidWorks Tools-Copy Settings Wizard" and pick "Save" settings
    On the second wizard page save all settings except toolbar (assuming you believe toolbars are messed up). Finish.
    Then perform the actions from #1 above where you are Resetting the SOLIDWORKS registry.
    Now start up SolidWorks which will create new "out of the box" registry values for your current user.
    Close SolidWorks so all registry values are written into the registry.
    Now restore the "good" values you wanted to keep by running "Copy Settings Wizard" and using the "Restore" option.
    The last resort is doing a finer-grain editing of the registry from option #1 above. Instead of renaming the top HKCU registry key for "SolidWorks XXXX", you would rename one of the sub-keys. As mentioned in the blog article, missing keys are restored with default values on the restart of SolidWorks. Unfortunately, we do not document the registry subkeys so you would be on your own if you choose to head down this road. As the blog article mentions, you need to be very careful when making modifications to the registry as this may cause serious instability on your system. Follow the steps described in the Tech Blog to be sure a registry backup is available and you take the right precautions.
    
    I hope this is helpful...
    
    Best Regards,
    John
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    - Deepak Gupta @ John Sweeney on Aug 15, 2017 2:30 AM
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      Thanks John, these would be helpful. And I think copy setting wizard might be the best one to use.
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Task pane glitch

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