Blue Screen and other weird things on Vista

from Stardock Forums
Hi, I had a similar problem before. Windowblinds was running fine on my Vista until recently. I cannot narrow down the problem (or don't want to go through the trouble). It is possible that this is due to the most recent ATI driver I installed (7-1_vista32_dd_ccc_enu_41241), or due to the newer updates for wb I downloaded. My most recent one was wb 5.49t(b).051. Here is what was happening. After updating wb (it was an update about one or two weeks ago), my system would show a bluescreen after reboot, restart again and then run fine. It would do this every now and then when I rebooted - it would do this twice and then be fine. When I uninstalled wb, the system did not show these symptoms. I uninstalled wb via sd central a couple days ago. Only today I noticed that there were three instances of wb.exe running in the taskmanager. When I killed them they came back after reboot. I was able to delete the executable from the wb folder. There was however another exe running, VistaSrv.exe, which I was not able to delete. Only a registry clean from anything windowblinds related and a reboot solved my problem. One thing is for sure (at least on my system). the uninstall via sd central did not remove some of the wb services. I am wondering if this was one reason my system would go into a bsd every other time with wb installed. for now I will wait for a more stable release. sorry that I did not create any reports, I don't want to go through the same trouble again for some time at least. I am running Symantec Antivirus and Vista native firewall with windows defender enabled. anything related to this exists? is this just my system? thanks
windowblinds
9,188 views 20 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Without more information on this there is little I can say.

Uninstalling WB should remove all the key processes and you should not normally get 3 instances of wbvista in taskmanager unless you have 3 logged in users.

We are not aware of any BSOD issues being caused by WB.  There was a small problem on a couple of machines where you could get a BSOD before the login screen would show, but this was resolved a month or so ago.  It is possible your service was not correctly updated and so you were using the old build still.

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've just started to get similar symptoms when starting my machine. Just as the login screen is about to appear I get a blank bluescreen and the computer restarts. This happend twice before the system manage to start up correctly.
I have WB installed, but not yet used it. And I'm not sure if it's due to a recent WB update or anything because I leave my computer on for long periods at a time, often days before rebooting.
I had my suspicions to an Ubuntu 6.10 Live CD I had tried out, because it seemed it appeared after I had used that. So I was wondering if it had written something to my disk.
I also updated to ATI drivers a couple of weeks ago. Didn't notice anything until now though.

I have Vista Ultimate RTM.

How can I check I don't have remains of an old build?
Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

If you look at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WindowBlinds\Group

What group name is it using?

Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Will try to reboot without doing that too see if it happends consistantly.
I'll report back.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I just shut down my computer. Then turned it on again. Everything went fine. Rebooted again, still fine.

The BSOD has only happened twice for me. Yesterday and this morning. It could be a random co-incidence, but I though I'd post it here as symptoms where the same.

Should I still set that setting to say UIGroup? Is that the correct value, or is it a debug value?
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I will reinstall wb today sometime and try to reproduce and report back here. will make a note of the registry entry you mentioned. back later. thanks

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
ok, reinstalled the latest version, upone reboot (no bsod) everything went fine. when I opened sd central it found a new update. Ok, without much thinking I let it update and it is then 5.50.017. It asks to reboot, fine again, no bluescreen. But then when it opens wb, there is no more Vista theme. Instead it offers an XP theme. When I apply a skin, everything gets screwed up. the taskbar is not skinned and the rest is somewhat. All I can do is go back, apply basic windows skin and go the vista to reapply the vista skin. there is one instance of wbvista.exe in the taskmanager. in the reg tree it lists UIGroup under the wb tree. I will now uninstall wb again, reinstall and then try without updating it. apparently it messes things up big time. here is the system info I get. WindowBlinds 5.1 System Information Report:

STATUS : WB+ SRV+ HLP+ UI+ TRAY+

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC.

WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC

Your machine does not support per pixel borders on WindowBlinds skins.

This is because :

Your computer graphics hardware does not support acceleration of per pixel alpha. WindowBlinds requires this for per pixel alphablended borders as without it performance would be poor. Please see if you can obtain new drivers for your graphics hardware. Recent ATI & NVIDIA boards should support this feature. Onboard graphics tend not to.

It appears you have enabled limited per pixel mode, so WindowBlinds will support per pixel, but with no hardware support.

You have one monitor in total.

(Generic PnP Monitor) 1 is attached to RADEON X600 Series

Wblind.dll 2006/10/09 10:24:20
Wblind64.dll 2006/10/09 11:51:37
Wbsrv.dll 2006/10/09 10:40:18
Wbconfig.exe 2006/10/10 16:39:13
Wbload.exe 2006/03/13 17:54:14
Wbhelp.dll 2004/09/18 16:37:07
Wbui.dll 2005/12/06 21:29:06
Tray.dll 2006/04/13 17:29:23

Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
thomassen: UIGroup is the correct value

Ok. I will change the value? Could there be anything else no properly updating?
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
me again. I reinstalled after cleaning everything. this time there were no instances of wb services in the taskmanager. No blue screens either (knock on wood). I can apply skins and I see the vista skin next to others that were installed. the version it installed is 5.49t(b).051. I open sd central and there it offers me to update again with the newest version of 5.50.017. I cancel the update. Below is the system info from within wb. Looks much better now. Apparently sd central thinks I have XP installed and wants to install a non Vista version? I will reboot a couple times now to see if there is a bsod and report back. Your computer has a Windows Experience Index base score of 3.6

Your Windows Graphics Experience score is 4

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 5 (5.50 (build 99 x86 - Vista Edition))

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC

WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC

(Generic PnP Monitor) 1 is attached to RADEON X600 Series

Wblind.dll 2007/02/15 13:36:20
Wbsrv.dll 2007/02/15 13:09:05
Wbconfig.exe 2007/02/15 13:35:52
Wbload.exe 2006/03/13 17:54:14
Wbhelp.dll 2004/09/18 16:37:07
Tray.dll 2006/04/28 18:26:49
Wbload.dll 2007/01/23 18:48:56


Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
There is no '5.50.017'. Your installed version is the correct one. In SDC settings, hit 'Refresh XML Data'.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
easy for you to say. thank you, this helped and the "there is no" update is gone. rebooted a couple times with no blue screen. I assume several things were messed up on my system. One more question. right after the logon screen I get a completely white screen for a couple seconds before it refreshes the ui. I have tried this with two skins (jitter and largo). I don't have this with the vista native theme. Is that normal? Although the chances that the problems I described will happen for others are minimal there seems to be a problem with the uninstaller not cleaning up correctly (and left me with a couple thins running in the background, especially the VistaSrv.exe). maybe sth worth looking into. thanks for all the quick help.

Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Did you upgrade your XP install to Vista or do a clean install? XP users were getting the wrong WB over the weekend. I wonder if there is a registry entry/etc. left behind if one upgrades to Vista?
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
nope, I did a clean install. I have not seen this update until today really. the problems I had before don't seem to be related to this. it's a new problem. but apparently my sdc xml database was outdated or messed up. not sure whey this would happen from one uninstall to another reinstall though. but hey, it's a machine, can't expect it to be perfect   

Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oye.....everyone saw the 5.50.17 version. It was a server glitch that was fixed. When you refreshed the XML data, it fixed it in SDC so that it didn't show.
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
thanks for the comment. oye is a little irritating. first you tell me that there is no v5.50.1, then you tell me everbody saw this. not very helpful.thanks