It came to my attention, after leaving the computer running for a bit, that Dragon was on the desktop foreground but not quite: a context menu was overlapping an after-image of another program going through its paces (Discord if that matters). I tried a few times to really get Dragon on the foreground to no avail: nothing rendered of the program itself beyond that context menu.
I went to the Task Manager and noticed there was a lot of activity on a CPU thread. Looking at the list of processes showed there was no single process as the source for that but Dragon processes did show up top regularly when sorted by CPU. As, by my reckoning, this had gone on for at least two hours I didn’t think it’d go anywhere fast so, on the Task Manager, I chose to kill the corresponding tree of processes.
I then looked for clues for what happened. I noticed free disk space had been reduced by ~7 GB and nearly all of it was restore point data which obviously meant there had been an update. Sure enough a relevant installer file was on /Windows/Temp and Dragon’s icon was missing from the recent program list on Windows’ Start menu.
Searching online for some clarification, I found a suggestion elsewhere to do a fresh update. I did so and there was no real change in the situation. You can find below screenshots detailing the CPU thread usage issue which I’ve never seen Dragon do with such consistency, the afterimage issue (Dragon is in the background but only after-images of the Task Manager are rendered), and the extensions I have on Dragon. Do note that my tack all through this is predicated on a thorough disinclination to delete my data. As I have a good amount of in-progress work tied up in Dragon, I must make a fine point in my convenience as an end user being more important than yours as developers.
The above being the situation I was faced with, I was compelled to downgrade. I have to say you could make this latter process a bit easier as I don’t take particularly kindly to have to use sites with questionable practices in order to get older versions of Dragon. This not to mention I only managed to get 76.0.3809.132 (32-bit) which I imagine is what, 6 months old? I wouldn’t think it too much trouble to keep the last 5 stable releases available to make the downgrading process easier to your users. In any case, v76 is working fine though its icon is still missing from recent programs list, automatic updates are disabled, I’ll probably look into updating in 6 months. Hopefully you’ll have it fixed by then.
ETA: Since troubleshooting on your own can get a bit longwinded, I forgot a few things first time around:
My operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit SP1.
The specific version of Dragon I updated to (and downgraded from) is 80.0.3987.87
Hello Dracontes. Thank you for writing us and for the feedback. It is normal for Dragon to use more CPU when it is updating and as I can see from the images provided, you have a lot of extensions installed (and I’m sure you have also a lot of cookies, passwords, history saved etc.) thus it will take more time (and automatically more CPU usage) until it goes to normal CPU usage. If you could give it more time to go to its normal behaviour it will be great.
Regarding the broken icon, this problem is from windows. Most probably is was wrongly cached.
It is normal for Dragon to use more CPU when it is updating and as I can see from the images provided, you have a lot of extensions installed (and I'm sure you have also a lot of cookies, passwords, history saved etc.) thus it will take more time (and automatically more CPU usage) until it goes to normal CPU usage. If you could give it more time to go to its normal behaviour it will be great.
Fair enough. As far as extensions go, the present online ecosystem obliges me. At least the Internet cache and cookies I can delete without much issue, having done so with some regularity. Doing so and then going through the uninstall/install process, Dragon now starts up with nary a hitch. Much obliged for pointing that out and I’ll keep it in mind for the next time something like this happens.
Regarding the broken icon, this problem is from windows. Most probably is was wrongly cached.
It showed up in the meanwhile, and it’s still around after updating from v76 to v80.
While I’m here and so it’s not all about my sophomore troubleshooting, all through this, the extension icons I’d hidden away in the “Customize and Control Comodo Dragon” menu went back onto the address bar. First when I downgraded to v76. I then tucked the unnecessary ones away again. Second when I now updated, successfully, to v80. It would be useful to have this particular customization option a bit more resilient to program updates and downgrades.