WindowBlinds 5.5 BETA available

GREAT!! Now... a couple of questions.

1) What about compatibility of Stardock Central and Vista, since that is the only way to download/install the new WindowBlinds 5.5? Are there any problems installing Stardock Central on Vista, e.g., RC2?

2) Is it recommended that current XP users install this new WB version 5.5?

WB5.5b cleared a problem I was having with one of the many skins (Vista Plus V2) I am using. I'm using XP Pro on my setup.

I love the blurring when changing the skin... that's slick!

My laptop beeps with the new beta version of windowblinds 5.5. I don't what is up with that. Anyone have any ideas what it is? I got windows xp pro. Thanks Stardock for products it works great besides the beeps.

Wanna hear something funny? I thought it was my laptop making the beeps when installing the beta. Well, I walked the kitchen to cook me some tator tots to snack on and forgot that my cellphone was in my pocket. I heard the beeps again and thought it was in my head and then pulled out my cellphone and the battery is dying. I have to recharge it. I thought that was funny. So it has nothing to do with windowblinds 5.5 at all.

Got some issues to report! Firstly, since it seems to force on DWM to do certain effects, my laptop which is only rated 1.1 on the Vista performance scale and can't do Aero Glass has got nasty black borders where there should be shadows and Flip (2D) has also gone black in an attempt to render thumbnails. Could you revert to regular behaviour/WindowFX for these? Also, when applying a skin, (during the blur screen) Explorer crashes and then only once its restarted, (which it might not do because Windows Error Reporting is waiting behind the blur with a 'do you want to send more information' prompt), will the blur disappear.

You can change wallpapers in windowblind 5.5 too.

What about compatibility of Stardock Central and Vista, since that is the only way to download/install the new WindowBlinds 5.5? Are there any problems installing Stardock Central on Vista, e.g., RC2?

Stardock Central works fine under Vista. We've been using it for months now on there.

Nidonocu: This beta requires you have WDDM drivers with support for Aero Glass.  Without those you will have black in various places.

This doesn't work at all for me in XP.

whenever I download and install 5.5 on my version of vista and restart upon application of a skin after restart explorer crashes. I have also done a clean install of vista and another install of 5.5 with the same effect- first time I apply a skin it crashes explorer. after a restart to get explorer going all seems to be ok. I also have a glitch with the wallpaper changer function. I like to run webshots on my desktop and unless it is up and running when I install 5.5 I cannot get it to become my wallpaper of choice no matter what.

This doesn't work at all for me in XP.

No problems on XPP here (so far). May have more to do with your hardware than OS, maybe? Post your system info - maybe there's a clue there.

imitation crabmeat wrote: I have also done a clean install of vista and another install of 5.5 with the same effect- first time I apply a skin it crashes explorer.

Funny that. I have the exact same problem on one of my laptops. I'm guessing this issue is possibly tied to the graphics card used. Try enabling the "Never use per pixel borders on a skin". You can find this in the "View my system information". This fixed the problem on my laptop.

Continual reboot prompt. I have installed WB 5.5 beta on my Vista x64 final install. Every time I try to load it I get the "Reboot" to enable prompt. I have the user account control turned off completely and going through the Defender logs I can see where it allowed vistasrv.exe and wbconfig were permitted. Interestingly enough wb config is added to RunOnce, which sort of surprises me. I have nothing else installed for registry or script protection except what comes with Vista.


The laptop on which this is running has a Vista rating of 4.5, and the video has a rating of 4.6 for both graphics and gaming. I am running the nVidia 9685 driver stack. As I said it is Vista rtm x64, running on a core 2 duo t7200, geForce Go 7600 with 256 MB.

On a different note...when I run SDCentral O cannot get to the registration pages for either CursorXP, or Object Dock, both of which I have licenses for. CXP install and runs, but the first launch of it I got the freeware screen.

Hawkeye666: As the readme clearly states, this is 32 bit only for now.

We are aware that on some machines it takes out explorer either on initial skin apply, or on unload.  We are tracking down why this is.  Would the machines that have this problem be running the RTM build rather than the RC2 build of Vista?

Neil Banfield wrote: We are aware that on some machines it takes out explorer either on initial skin apply, or on unload. We are tracking down why this is. Would the machines that have this problem be running the RTM build rather than the RC2 build of Vista?

(because quoted text makes for easier thread reading)

The laptop I have is using XP Pro. I just ghosted with a clean image and installed WB stable build 5.5 with no problems. I'll test the beta install again once I have my settings the way I want them and created a new ghost image to the server.

The no see config window issue is a problem on any size widescreen monitor from what I can tell, either a XP insall or a clean Vista RTM install. Same reulst on 3 different computers with 3 different widescreen monitors using ATI and nvidia graphics.

What are the resolution settings on those rigs?

Windows XP SP2 - Italian
ATI Mobility Fire GL2 (1600x1200-32b)
1Gb Ram - Objectdock 1.5 std running

I upgraded WB to the 5.49a[b] version available. Rebooted. Everything was fine. Reboot again ... no skin appears, only the XP bars on top of windows and task bar, resized depending on the skin. Tried to change skin to one installed with the WB (why there is not an option to avoid EVERYTIME the standard ugly skins to be re-installed? Stop the Mac Os 9 skin to be spreaded in 2007 ...), no way to get the windows skinned.
Something's wrong?

Would the machines that have this problem be running the RTM build rather than the RC2 build of Vista?

I had no issues on RC2, but I started having this issue when I installed RTM.

Daiwa wrote: What are the resolution settings on those rigs?

Laptop: 1920x1200 (because I like desktop realestate).

I just noticed 5.49a[b].021. Will test the latest build on the laptop.

I don't know what it is, but on my rc2 my mousepointer changes to busy every few seconds, if i unload wb it's gone?

anyone seen this?

Ikku

Neil: Thanks for putting an early WB Beta out for us Vista users to tinker with. Like Nidonocu, I have no aero (Intel 915GMS chipset) and am hoping to find it via Windowblinds, fully understanding you're working with a completely different API.

Keep the updates coming, we're looking to forward progress with each one!

Best regards,
-Jim Wilt

Vista RTM on a 1.0 rated laptop also pulses a busy cursor at almost exactly 1 second intervals running WB 5.5. I changed that cursor to standard as work-around for now.