So sometimes when I drag a song master to the drop station, the dialogue box remains hidden. Can't get to it with ALT-TAB, or by otherwise closing open windows. The effect is that BiaB acts like it has crashed, even though it has not. It's just waiting for me to respond to a dialogue box I can't see or get to. I can close BiaB with Task Manager and reopen and then everything works fine again. I'm on a Windows 10 PC (dedicated DAW) with the latest version of BiaB 2024.

This usually happens after I've left BiaB open for a couple of days.

Any idea of how to stop this annoyance or navigate to the hidden window?

Thanks!

Are you talking about drag to the + as I can't get it to go behind in normal or DAW Plug-In mode, you can make Biab small so you can see and click the dialog.

Ron,

I haven't come across your issue with rendering but in the past when I had a window hiding behind the main program window, I pressed ALT+TAB (which didn't show the hidden window) and then clicked on BIAB's main program in the ALT+TAB display. When BIAB opened, the hidden window was sitting in front of the program. Maybe this will work in your case.

Regards,
--Noel

Musocity, yes, that's the window. Don't think I've tried that trick yet, but will next time. THANKS!

Noel, that's a result I've not seen when trying to ALT+TAB to the hidden dialogue box, but I will verify it next time. THANK YOU!

I'll note the results in this post after the next time this random issue occurs and (hopefully) mark 'resolved'.

I have similar problems happen a lot, not just with BIAB.
Unfortunately I think this is related more to Windows 10 than anything else.
It drives me crazy and I've never found a solution.

Sometimes minimizing the program will show the hidden message.
I think it is a Win 10 problem also.

Update: Just had another incident, and the BiaB window is unfortunately unresponsive to all the keyboard shortcuts I can find for resizing/activating windows including Windows + Arrow down, Windows + Taskbar number, Windows + Tab and Alt + Tab. The other active windows respond fine, but the BiaB window never moves or changes size.

The BiaB windows is maximized at the moment, think I'll see if I can recreate this issue in an unmaximized window and drag the borders to reveal the hidden dialogue box.

Lee and Mario, thanks for your input, I'm thinking this might indeed just be a Windows 10 thing.

More soon...

Before doing anything resize the window first like I showed above as you can't access the main GUI when the render window is open.

Musocity, unfortunately, the BiaB window up to now has been maximized and cannot be resized after the issue occurs. It is completely unresponsive to mouse or keyboard commands. That is why I'm resizing the BiaB windows before the issue to see if I can drag an edge of the BiaB window after the issue. Make sense?

Ron, where did you install BiaB? On the C drive (C:/BB) or in the program folder? This could be important.
Have your thoroughly scanned for viruses and malware?
Have you tested your RAM? Note other programs may work but if BiaB is using a bad section of RAM it would cause problems.
How much space is unused on your HD?
I'm just trying to brainstorm things that may be the problem.
Good luck.

Mario, thanks for the ideas! Have chased most of these thoughts around. No disk errors, plenty of system resources, plenty of disk storage, etc. Wouldn't surprise me if this is a conflict between BiaB's "always on top" capability and Windows 10. Truthfully, this has been going on for years and several consecutive versions of BiaB. Know how to work around it with CTL-ALT-DEL, I'm just wishing I didn't have to...

It sounds like you are on top of things and that is great.
I have one question. You said "This usually happens after I've left BiaB open for a couple of days."
What happens if you shut down BiaB after each time you use it?
I ask because I wonder if BiaB has a memory leak and that is causing the computer to freeze. I shut down BiaB when I'm done using it and I have only had the problem on a couple of occasions in all of the years I have used BiaB.

UPDATE: So following up on Musocity's idea, I shrank the BiaB window to a size smaller than the dialogue box BEFORE dragging the Master to the Drop Zone. But the dialogue box doesn't peak out after I drag the Master. It just freezes again. No keyboard or mouse commands have any effect.

Am going to give this a rest. Mario's idea of closing BiaB when I'm done makes sense (THANKS!) and I think I'll just do that for now.

THANKS again for all!

Do you have more than one monitor?

Andrew, yes I do have a dual monitor setup. I don't see the dialogue box on either screen though.

Right click Save Link/Target As Move render box.ahk
You can try this AutoHotkey script, it will move the render box no matter where it's hiding to position 10,10 on the primary monitor.
Here's the code:

Install www.autohotkey.com v1 then if you have Biab set to Run As Administrator
set C:\Program Files\AutoHotkey\AutoHotkey.exe to Run As Administrator by right click Properties > Compatibility.

Just double click the script to run

I did notice that when that render box is on the screen the drag n drop don't work in Explorer.

Musocity, ha! That worked PERFECTLY! Once I can see the dialogue box and click OK, the drop zone is populated and BiaB is operating normally again.

That's a HUGE time saver for me. I really, REALLY appreciate it! THANK YOU!!!

I'll mark this "resolved"...finally!