I'm probably closer to 75 than are most on this list, and I assure you that as you get older you really ought to get brighter. Insulting people from whom you are trying to get help does not count as "brighter."
Yet I would like to be the sort of man who gives help to others, not because they deserve it, but because it is the right thing to do.
It is the case (and this will be a controversial statement, I fear) that Stardock could be a little more explicit about the changes these products make to people's computer experience.
Now this is the entire reason *for* the software, so it is understandable why someone would be completely puzzled as to why someone who downloaded and installed it (it's not a trojan, after all--you do have to explicitly install it) would not understand that their computer experience will change as a result.
But many people (myself certainly included) have done boneheaded things in the past, and I'm glad I have done most of mine in some quiet corner instead of in the middle of town square. So here goes:
When you install any of this sort of program (which are designed to change the way your computer looks and behaves) you are "changing" some of the settings of your system. This isn't anything permanent, but it can be unsettling. Most people don't know just how much you can change your computer system's "look and feel" without changing the other applications you might run.
Most of us, after all, don't have computers so that we can look at something pretty, we expect that these things (somewhat ugly boxes, taken as a whole) will enable us to do something we would otherwise not be able to do--such as play a thousand games of solitaire without having to shuffle and deal out the cards.
But you can change the way your system looks, and lots of people really like being able to "customize" their computers. You can change the colors, the size and shape of the cursor, the icons (little pictures that represent programs), the wallpaper (what shows "behind" or "underneath" all of your programs, and much more. By the way, you can make some changes to your system in Windows itself--by getting to the "screen properties" menus which are on the control panel, and on many systems, which you can see by right-clicking on the background and selecting "properties". For whatever reason, though, Microsoft chose to offer very few options through Windows.
These programs--including "Windowblinds" (WB for short)--will from the very beginning change some things on your computer. These changes might be a bit frightening if you weren't fully expecting them, especially with the continual news about computer viruses that, well, change things on your computer you weren't expecting.
But these are not viruses. Nor are they trojan horses, phishing scams, hijackers or any other sort of program that *do* find their way onto your computer without your knowledge and often *do* make changes that you really won't like.
Instead, these are programs that give you the ability to make the sort of changes you want to make. There are so many of them because (well, I'm not sure why, it does seem confusing to have so many of them, but) they all do different things. Windowblinds changes the way your title bars (that appear at the top of each program you run), colors, and even some of the built-in "system" or "utility" programs look or work.
For example, when you start your computer, instead of seeing the usual solid-colored background with a bunch of icons, each representing a separate program) you could see a picture of your family, or of a peaceful blue/green lagoon of some South Seas Island paradise. Instead of showing all of those little icons, you could have some inconspicuous buttons that will take you to sub-menus, organized however you like.
The point of the software is to give you many, many more options to change how your computer looks--and how it selects and runs--the programs you already have.
So if you choose to uninstall the software, you will also need to "reset" your computer to the way it was before. In order to make it easier for folks to get in and start changing things, the software changes some of your settings when it is first run. But don't worry. It doesn't delete any program from your computer nor does it make any sort of changes to Windows that can't be easily undone.
The people who made this software can be forgiven for making these changes automatically, I believe, because changing the way your computer looks and feels is the whole point of these programs! It wouldn't make sense to download and install these programs if you didn't plan on changing anything. . .
Yet it can be disquieting to go to where your control panel has always been, and see that it isn't there any more! Resist the panic. It really isn't gone. Just waiting somewhere else.
So when you uninstalled these programs (I believe that's what you said you had tried), and then went to look for your control panel, it would not have "gone back" to where it was originally. It didn't go away, just went around the corner.
If you played around with computers before this "Windows thing" you could make sense of it by realizing that this program did the equivalent of creating some complicated batch files. So if you go to your Windows Explorer and look for the files, you will find them in the same "place" on your hard drive as they were before.
The only thing that has changed is the way you start these programs.
So if you still want to get rid of the whole thing (I'd encourage you to reconsider--it's really not that scary once you get into it, and most of us like our "work spaces" to be just a particular way. . .)you should use WB to change back to the "default" and then uninstall the program.
Then, your control panel will be back exactly where you remember leaving it!
And there are helpful people here, who are usually pretty good about answering questions--expecially to those who don't begin by yelling. . .
Stardock Forums
WinCustomize Forums
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(grammar & spelling suggest otherwise)
