Correct. If I get mspaint to open by running the batch file or by opening and closing mtpaint, it will only open once, after that it will not open again. Also, rebooting does not change things.

tanstaafl.

EDIT:

OK -- additional data: Running the batch file a second time does NOT open mspaint, and in fact the batch file stalls in the middle and the log file is only partially written. I am attaching the log file again, as the second log is appended to the first and you can see the point where the process quit while trying to start mspaint. Hopefully this will prove to be an "aha moment".

db

SECOND EDIT:

Now mspaint will not open no matter what I do. The mtpaint trick no longer works, nor does the batch file.

db

Still no "aha moment" in there, unfortunately. I'm perplexed. If the process is terminating accidentally, I'd expect to see something in there. At this point, I'd be looking at remote-debugging the problem, but I'm not sure how we're going to work that.

If I was wearing a hat Doug I'd take it off to you for the amount of time you're spending on this. Had I been in your position I would've nuked it and started again.

I would never have noticed that MSPaint wasn't working to begin with. There is really no reason not to use Paint.NET or any of the handful of other free image editors that at least have support for PNG, if nothing else.

There is still one reason to use Paint, it is still the quickest way to get the output of alt-print screen into a file. Unless you already have paint.net open...

Is there some shortcut I'm unaware of? Because I can't see much difference between [starting paint, resizing the default canvas to something smaller than your screenshot if necessary, hitting ctrl-v, ctrl-s] and [starting paint.net, hitting ctrl-alt-v, ctrl-s]. Personally, I think that not having to consider the size of the image to be pasted saves more time than waiting a little longer for the program to open.

On the other hand, I see that Paint actually does support PNG now, so it's worked its way back up to cutting-edge 1996 technology.

I think Purrint is faster. I've used it to auto save every printscreen / alt-printscreen to sequentially numbered PNG files.

Paint starts faster than Paint.NET.

You don't need to resize the default canvas in even vaguely recent versions of Paint (from at least XP on), it resizes when you paste. As Roger points out Paint starts a lot faster than Paint.net, especially the first time.

But more importantly I can sit down at any users PC, in any organisation and start Paint it two seconds by hitting windows-r and typing "mspaint". In those sort of cases installing Paint.net isn't really an option.

It is a shame though that MSFT never took the Apple approach to screenshots and just saved the screenshot to a file.

One big reason: Simplicity. MSPaint's limited feature set makes it very simple to run. What I do with graphics is pretty much limited to things like doing a screenshot of a Google Map and printing it out, or importing a .jpg and drawing an arrow on it, or cropping and resizing a .jpg to post on this bbs. I just don't need a color palette adjustable for tint, saturation, and ... whatever that third thing is. I don't need layers., I don't need 20 different drawing tools with 15 different line widths. For my usage, more capabilities does not mean "more better".

Another reason: I really would like to know what has gone wrong with my computer, and whether it is the harbinger of additional trouble.

Finally, I have used MSPaint for 15 years or so, I have fully mastered its rather simple interface, and don't feel like going through the learning curve of a new program.

tanstaafl.

I downloaded and tried Paint.net and I must admit it looks promising. It has features I will probably not need or use, but at least it uses the philosophy so well demonstrated in the 2003 version of Excel of keeping the top layer of the GUI simple and basic and hiding the complex things underneath. In the few minutes I have played with it I have found some features that were lacking in MS Paint that I like, such as being able to rotate the image in increments other than 90 degrees, and considerably more default options for sizing and the fact that (AFAICT) all the tools work when the image size is expanded or contracted.

If there are any shortcomings in the program, it is probably only that something doesn't work the way I expect and due to the more complex GUI I just haven't figured out what to do yet.

Thanks, Bitt, for pointing this program out to me.

But... can anyone offer an answer of why my MS Paint program won't work? If I have Paint.net open, all I have to do is click on the Save icon and MS Paint will work. One time. Click Save in Paint.net and MS Paint will work again. Once. Very strange behavior.

tanstaafl.

It's most likely been pointed out the registry may be at fault. Like that's a lot of help.

At the risk of going a bit off topic is there a 3rd party reg editor that "just works better".

For instance I tried searching with Regedit for "mspaint.exe". After many hits of F3, fatigue set in.

I'm thinking it would be nice to have an editor that could provide a filtered view, instead of skipping from place to place.

Registry Commander

Also, these are better search utilities, but fall back on RegEdit for actual editing:
RegSeeker
RegScanner