I've been using OpenOffice.org 1.0 as supplied with Mandrake 9.0 ever since I installed the OS - quite happily, it's very similar in operation to StarOffice which I used under win so no problems there.

Still dual booting for a couple things. So...

One day last week I rebooted into Mandy and it restored my previous KDE session as usual. I had not been using OOo on the previous occasion, but this time to my surprise OOo tried to open.

'Tried' - because it didn't, it hung at the welcome screen. And the welcome screen sits 'in front' of any other window one opens, rendering the desktop unusable.

And it's sticky - present on all 4 desktops...

For a couple reasons - I don't remember altering any settings (no - make that, I DIDN'T alter any settings!), and I'm a newbie the only solution I have is to reboot (the app actually opens on about one in three attempts, then I can close it down) I have no idea where to go next in looking for a solution. Nothing in the OOo documentation or on a quick search of this or other help sites, even googling, seems to be of much help at all.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Many thanks

JD

In future if that happens, you can run xkill then click on the window. That should remove it.

I have no idea why OOo would be starting itself, so I suspect it's KDE session manager gone wonky. Try looking in the control center under the session management areas (I think that's what it's called) and see if it's there.

Otherwise open a command line and do a ps aux, try and pick off the openoffice process (it might be called sxwriter or something, OOo is in fact staroffice with a different name), then kill it. Then log out - make sure you set Save Session when it's not running, so it "remembers" that it's not running. Then try logging in again.

I doubt this is a problem that needs reboots.

Thanks Mhearn - yeah I tried xkill which did nothing because the welcome screen ignores the mouse cursor as if it wasn't there...no time to try your other suggestions as yet due to RL will do so as soon as I am back at my own computer instead of my mother's webtv :0

Once again thank you for taking the time to respond, very much appreciated.

JD

PS I'm also sure it doesn't need reboots that's the M$ way but one gets like that after years of win...I measure my progress by the diminishing need to use this particular sledgehammer but not there yet, thanks for your patience.

Just wanted to let Mhearn know that his suggestion re: finding pid in ps aux then killing it worked like a charm. Many thanks again.

JD

good to know. I should really have chosen a better username, I didn't realise you could have spaces in it <sigh>

/me wishes he could change it to "Mike Hearn" or something.