Hello, I’ve been having an issue with gplates on my new pc that I haven’t had before. When I click to place a new vertex for any kind of geometry the dot is placed below where my cursor actually is. This makes it very difficult to use the program. Big thanks to anyone that can help me with this issue, I haven’t been able to find anyone else with this sort of issue.
Hi Elexia,
Is your new PC using Windows? And I assume you’re using the latest GPlates (2.3)?
We had a mouse pointer offset issue that happened on Windows just before GPlates 2.3 was released (and was fixed prior to the release). It was an issue in one of the libraries we use (Qt) that was fixed by upgrading to a newer version (Qt 5.15.2).
However a couple of months ago I received a report that looks very similar to this - the inability to click/select a feature (eg, a polyline/polygon) - that is likely caused by a similar mouse offset issue. But I have not heard back from them, so I don’t know the systems involved (other than they used the Windows build of GPlates 2.3).
Do you know the model or type of your new PC? And are you using a laptop connected to an external monitor? Or some setup different than a regular PC connected to a monitor. And I assume you’re using a regular mouse and not a trackpad?
PS: Does it only happen in the 3D Orthographic view, or does it also happen in the 2D map views?
I am using windows and the latest GPlates. I ran CCleaner to clean up my pc and that fixed the issue, though I’m not sure how. For your own bookeeping, I am using a laptop (ACER Model No. N20C1) and a regular mouse, though the issue was happening with both the mouse and trackpad. I am also connecting to an external monitor. When not connected to an external monitor, I get the same green line issue mentioned in previous post despite updated drivers. I think that issue is because my laptop uses my processors graphics for it’s screen and the gpu for external monitors, but I’m not sure. As for the mouse issue, as I said it’s resolved for now though I’m not exactly sure how. Thank you very much for the help!
Great! And thanks for providing those follow up details. That’s very interesting that CCleaner fixed the issue. That leads me to suspect that a different Qt5 DLL was being used by GPlates somehow (perhaps the older version Qt < 5.15.2, that had the mouse offset issue).
We place DLLs used by GPlates in the same directory as the GPlates EXE, so they should get found first (ie, before any system installed DLLs). Although there is one note mentioned here that might have caused your issue (prior to using CCleaner) - apparently before searching the application directory it does the following (which I hadn’t seen before)…
If a DLL with the same module name is already loaded in memory, the system uses the loaded DLL, no matter which directory it is in. The system does not search for the DLL).
…so perhaps some other application, using Qt5, was run before GPlates.
And regarding the green lines, that’s a good point (that it could be using the integrated GPU, except when using external monitor where it might be using dedicated GPU). I wonder if the integrated GPU drivers got updated (maybe it was the dedicated that got updated).
The issue is definitely caused by other versions of the DLL being already loaded in memory. Disabling all other programs from running at system start isn’t guaranteed to fix the issue either; on Windows 10 and 11 (not sure about earlier versions) some programs will run some DLLs or services immediately in the background even when the program is not allowed to run at system start.
In order to manually fix the issue, you need to use file explorer to search your entire system for “qt5” to see where each instance of the DLLs are located. (This can take a long time on HDDs. Don’t close the window, be patient.) If file explorer doesn’t let you see the full file location, then left click once on the file and hover your mouse over the partial file location. A popup will show over it showing the full address. Do not close the window you did the search in or you will have to so the search again.
Open a second file explorer window and navigate to the file location of one of the DLLs in your search. Open a third file explorer window and navigate to your GPlates install location. Copy all DLLs in your Gplates folder that start with qt5 (there should be 8 of them). Paste them all into the second file explorer window. When prompted, select “Replace the files in the destination”. Then, select the check box for “Do this for all current items” and click continue. If you are not able to complete this step, you probably don’t have administrator privileges. Sign in to your admin account or contact whoever is in charge of your computer system.
If the copy completes without any errors, then that instance of the DLLs was not the problem. Repeat the above steps for the next instance in your search results. Eventually, you should get an error saying that the copy can not be completed because the DLL is open in a program. This is your culprit (or at least one of them). Open task manager and look for any services or programs in the background processes section that are from the program in question. Rick click the service and click “End task.” Then try the copy again. If the copy works, then your problem is hopefully solved. Restart the computer and check. If the problem persists after the restart, then there is another program running the DLLs at system start. Sorry. Do the process all over again until you find the next program that is running in the background.
In my case, there were two programs that were causing the issue; Private Internet Access and ReallusionHub. Disabling the programs from running at system start did not work because the programs don’t care what you tell them to do, they run anyways.