[Solved] Rainmeter can't load any skin named clock.ini in XP

[dragonmage]

Confirmed by several people now. Rename any skin to clock.ini and Rainmeter throws a "No Meters" error.

Problem apparently does not occur in Win7.

[spx]

This behavior is not a Rainmeter's bug. It's XP's limitation.
On XP, we cannot use Clock.ini, Win.ini, System.ini, etc., as Rainmeter's skin-ini filename. These ini filenames are handled as "IniFileMapping".

Administering the Windows NT Registry

How Does Mapping Work?

NT implements mapping by trapping the private profile API routines I mentioned in Chapter 1. Windows applications and components ordinarily use these calls to get and set data stored in INI files, but when there's a mapping entry, the NT kernel first checks for the presence of a mapping key. If one exists, and if it points to a key that contains data, that data is returned to the caller. If there's no mapping key, or if it points to an empty or non-existent Registry key, NT will go ahead and try to read the data from the INI file. The caller need never be aware that the data didn't come from the requested file.

Mapping only occurs when there's a mapping key in place. These keys are stored beneath the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping subkey. If you look there, you'll notice a number of subkeys with names like Clock.INI, Win.INI, and SYSTEM.INI. These keys tie sections of the old Win 3.1-style INI files to keys in the Registry so that old Windows 3.1 components like the Clock and the original media controller interface (MCI) will continue to find their settings.

IniFileMapping.jpg

[maminscris]

damn xp, we should make a trial to microsoft for discrimination, now that is why aranea clock did not load :evil:

thanks for the tip, we should put this in manual, do not rename skins like...

[Varelse]

That also explains why my System skin was giving me a [boot.description] error. It was named system.ini.

[dragonmage]

Thanks for clearing that up spx.

[Dave_W]

Well I never.

Can this go in the manual under the "Time" measure section? Only...well, I don't want to ADMIT how long I've just spent trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my lovingly-crafted Clock.ini!

[maminscris]

Well I never.

Can this go in the manual under the "Time" measure section?

a section with do not name your skins: system.ini, clock.ini and so on