[Solved] Can not Minimize window - program disappered/closed

[kflee2000]

The symptom is when I click the minimize icon in any opened program window, like LibreOffice Calc or a Firefox browser,
the program disappear all together as if it is closed, instead of the normal minimize to bottom panel bar which can be
click and continue the work.

I used Linuxmint 13 Mate on a 64bit machines and the system has been working very well for over a year. When the problem occcured,
I have Chrome Browser, Firefox browser, LibreOffice, Skype and file holder program opened.

I noted week ago, I have a keyborad frozen case and was solved by power off and reboot.

I try to add "mintmenu" to the panel and the error "The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:MATE_mintMenu" thrown up.
Searcing web and some of them seen related this to Python 3 but my system is still Pytho 2.7 which I guess could not be the casue.

I am not sure these two issues are related. Can anyone help, please.

[kflee2000]

I submit a question "Can not mininize window" and still waiting for anyone who may be able to help. The symptom is that when I click minimize icon, the program got closed instead of minimized.

Meanwhile I noted that the Mate window minimize icon is mapped to Alt-F9. So, I test by start up any program and type Alt-F9 and the program got closed. If I enter Alt-F4 it will ask to close the window as normal.

Could it because the keyboard mapping got corrupted somehow; and can any one tell me how to restore default keyboard mapping without re-install the Linuxmint?

[xenopeek]

Let's take a few steps back and try to separate these issues and analyze them.

minimize closes windows
That's not a keyboard issue, as you already wrote yourself this happens also when you click the minimize icon. Just to confirm, do programs appear in your window list on your panel before you minimize them? If they aren't visible there before minimizing, then minimizing is working fine but you have a problem with your panel.

Have you tried confirming whether a minimized program is indeed closed? To do so, let's set up a simple test.
1> Open a terminal.
2> Open pluma (text editor).
3> Run this command on the terminal:

Code: Select all

pgrep pluma

It should return you a number, showing the process id (pid) of pluma.
4> Now minimize all pluma windows and run the above command again. Does it still return a number, or does it return nothing.

panel error
You write of a second problem where you can't add mintMenu to the panel. Just to be clear; you can only ever have 1 mintMenu on your panels. So if you already have it there, or have a second panel with already the mintMenu, you will be getting this error. If that isn't the cause, try resetting the mintMenu settings. Do so from the terminal with this command:

Code: Select all

mintmenu --reset

[kflee2000]

Thank for reply.

I can confirm that the program like pluma start and work normally; the problem happened only when I need to minimize by click the minus icon. One can actually see the program quickly minimizing and disappear to the right side of the bottom panel but not the normal small icon that one can use to restore.

The pgrep command showed that the program is still alive and running. If I run pluma a second time and do pgreg, it will return two PIDs indicating both
copies are still running.

I set up my system with three panels, top, bottom and right. I put frequently used applications on top and links on the right so to keep the bottom for the
minimized programs. I also try mintmenu --reset and it said: "All mintMenu settings are now restored to default" but that does not seem to have any effect.

If I try to use add to paneel and select mintmenu, it would give: "The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:MATE_mintMenu".

please help and thanks in advance.

[kflee2000]

Hi, Xenopeek,

"
panel error
You write of a second problem where you can't add mintMenu to the panel. Just to be clear; you can only ever have 1 mintMenu on your panels. So if you already have it there, or have a second panel with already the mintMenu, you will be getting this error. If that isn't the cause, try resetting the mintMenu settings. Do so from the terminal with this command:
"

I did not fully understand the above message untill I, in a desparated attempt to solve my problem, click System Tool -> UXTerm and a good old familiar black window pop up. After I close it and a shock - the left corner mintmenu disappeared as well ! Reboot did not restore the mintmenu so I have to use Add Panel ->mintMenu to get it back. Only at this point, I realised that mintMenu is associated with "wheel with the word Menu" and the one labelled as "Main Menu" in the add panel is another style menu that can be put in multiple panels. It is just the word "Main Menu" that mislead my thinking.

Thus one seem able to conclude that the problem of "can not minimize a window" is not related to error cause by attempt to install multiple mintMenu.

But this raise the question why open a XUTerm or XTerm and then close it, would cause the mintMenu to disapper? For a user, when "the wheel" disappeared, it is rather panicking! The bottom panel is a reassurance of system working to many.

[kflee2000]

Just for the benefit of someone may experience this rather silly problem. The disappearing of the program when the winodw minimize icon is click is due to the lost of the "window list". Thus my whole nightmare was solved by simply in the "add panel" to the bottom panel and add the "window list".

[masacote]

Thanks kflee2000, really you made my day because I installed linux mint sylvia and I was dealing with this problem and with no idea about, but using this was resolved.