If you’re like me, then you haven’t been able to use the Pownce desktop application because it throws an error within seconds of running it. And it looks like I am not alone. Well, no longer.It turns out that the Adobe AIR runtime doesn’t get along well with all graphics drivers. The use of transparency in the Pownce app to give you those nice round corners and drop shadow is specifically what is causing the crash.
Rather than wait for Adobe to fix the problem, here is a way that you can disable transparency in Pownce and then use it to your heart’s content:
1. Find your Pownce installation. I’m not sure where it ends up on Macs, but on my WinXP machine that is experiencing the crash, it is located here:
C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Pownce
2. Open the \META-INF\AIR\application.xml file in your Pownce directory.
3. Locate the line that begins with this:
<rootContent systemChrome="none" transparent="true"
4. Set the transparent attribute to “false”, like so:
<rootContent systemChrome="none" transparent="false"
5. Save the file.
That’s it! The next time you run Pownce, it should display with a light blue border. But more importantly, it will not crash.