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Newest WB update

Newest WB update

Not Skinning windows

Hi Guys, I find myself using this forum far more than I would like to recently. The latest quirk I have now is with WB 6.02.024 which I updated too yesterday. This is a sporadic issue on my laptop but has me at a bit of a loss and up untill the update I had never seen this. WB now seems to have problems skinning explorer and program windows, that is to say on a first opening of My Computer for example; I get a completly unskinned explorer window i.e. optically a basic old fashioned style win3.11. If I re-open the window it comes up skinned properly. This has now happened 7 or 8 times and with dif' windows and programs. Here's hoping for a quick fix... Jon
17,812 views 44 replies
Reply #26 Top
Image using WB 6.02WWW Link

Image using WB 6.00 WWW Link

Let us hope that this will work and show that it can be skinned.

My question is why and when was this feature taken out by design?
Reply #27 Top
Like an idiot, I did not archive. So I don't have access to the previous build. I'm stuck without WB until this issue is corrected. Unfortunately, no response regarding my submitted ticket (ticket ID: BOP-708546) yet.
Reply #28 Top

Mebion: That looks like a very old version of MS Money.

The window was excluded due to newer versions of MS Money having a custom skinned titlebar on that window.

Reply #29 Top
For anyone with this issue:

I got a response on my ticket. So far the following has worked -

From Dave Marquis:
"I think a total cleaning of WB & registry files may help.

First, uninstall WB via Stardock Central.
Then run regedit (Win Key + R) type regedit in the Run box and hit enter.
Look for and delete the following folders, if found;

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Stardock\WindowBlinds
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Stardock\WindowBlinds
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Stardock\ObjectDesktop\WindowBlinds

Then, reboot your PC and launch Stardock Central. highlight 'Object Desktop' on the left and re-install WindowBlinds.

Does that help?"


Hope that helps. Working so far for me. Off to work, I'll try more tonight after work to be sure.

Reply #30 Top
YAY!!!
AKA Dave Marquis
Reply #31 Top
Nice work folks:)

IMO a very helpful group of folks pulling together.

:CONGRAT:
Reply #32 Top
Nice work folks:)

IMO a very helpful group of folks pulling together.
End of quote


Indeed. All is working quite well. Haven't run across an unskinned program window or explorer window since using the suggestion from Dave Marquis.

;)

Reply #33 Top

Mebion: That looks like a very old version of MS Money.

The window was excluded due to newer versions of MS Money having a custom skinned titlebar on that window.

End of quote
It may well be, but so is Office 2003 which I also use. After 2004, Money got a bad press here in the UK with stories via customer feedback of compatibility issues with IE7. All I want to know is where in the sequence was this change made? I have rolled back to a 6.00 version and it works.
Reply #34 Top
I've got the same issue. After I updated WB, rebooted, I started getting random windows missing the window frame. I would still click on the areas where the titlebar should be, but it was completely invisible. First app that I noticed it happened to was Notepad. However, not all windows was affected.
I then rebooted again, and now nothing was skinned. I opened up WB config and applied the skin again. Had to kill Explorer.exe and start it again to have my taskbar skinned.



Your computer has a Windows Experience Index base score of 4.8
Your Windows Graphics Experience score is 5.9

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 6.02 (build 74 x86 - Vista Edition)

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC
WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC
(SyncMaster 226BW(Digital)) 1 is attached to NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Series GPU
(SyncMaster 740BF,SyncMaster Magic CX702B/CX715B(Digital)) 2 is attached to NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Series GPU

Wblind.dll         2008/01/14 17:02:20
Wbsrv.dll         2008/01/14 17:02:35
Wbconfig.exe         2008/01/14 17:02:35
Wbload.exe         2007/09/27 17:47:44
Wbhelp.dll         2007/08/27 10:54:07
Tray.dll              2007/09/12 16:58:21
Wbload.dll              2007/09/12 16:58:28
Screen.exe         2008/01/14 17:02:18

{attempted fix of line breaks - ZubaZ}
Reply #35 Top
Sorry, but the linebreaks are gone. Set posting setting to plain text, but as you see, no effect...
Reply #36 Top
I had hopes that the last reboot sorted things out. But the problem still persists. I keep loosing the window frames.
Reply #37 Top
Let us know at support@stardock.com. Please include your WB system info.
Reply #38 Top
Please try uninstalling WB and deleting the registry keys as suggested above.
Reply #39 Top
I uninstalled WB.
Rebootet.
Removed leftover files.
Removed the registry entries mentioned previously in this post. (Only found one, located in HKCU)
Rebootet.
Installed WB from SDC again.
Rebooted.
Applied a skin.
Issue still present.

I'll submit a bug report tomorrow.
Reply #40 Top
Can you also try one other thing.  If you have a second account on the pc, login to that one and see if the same issue happens when you run apps.
Reply #41 Top
I've been having the same problem since the release of 6.2, I tried the uninstall/install route, no joy.

I had a thought since it was intermittent and seemed to manifest after start up and I could tell I was going to have problems when the Vista Side Bar went opaque on start up.

So I wondered if something was stuck in the Prefetch. I downloaded the latest version of CCleaner and used the advanced mode to clear the Prefetch and ran the registry cleaner a couple of times.

It seems to be working for now.

I'll post an update after a couple of days if it is still holding.

Chris

System Info

Your computer has a Windows Experience Index base score of 4.1
Your Windows Graphics Experience score is 4.1

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 6.02 (build 74 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 NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

Wblind.dll 2008/01/14 17:02:20
Wbsrv.dll 2008/01/14 17:02:35
Wbconfig.exe 2008/01/14 17:02:35
Wbload.exe 2007/09/27 17:47:44
Wbhelp.dll 2007/08/27 11:54:07
Tray.dll 2007/09/12 17:58:21
Wbload.dll 2007/09/12 17:58:28
Screen.exe 2008/01/14 17:02:18
Reply #42 Top
Well I thought it was fixed, but it is still happening. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason on which windows are affected.

http://images2.stardock.com/0/0/24/Desktop.jpg?912297

It does seem to be a bit better though.
Reply #43 Top

Can you also try one other thing.  If you have a second account on the pc, login to that one and see if the same issue happens when you run apps.
End of quote


I logged on to the Guest account. But while I was using it everything seemed fine. However, I'm not sure if the issue isn't present at that account. The issue doesn't always immediately appear. I didn't have time to spend all too much time logged on to the Guest account as I needed to to do some work in my main one.

Since my first post I updated to another new version that came, but that didn't fix it either.

As the issue doesn't always show it self immediately it's hard to tell if proposed solutions works until the system has run for a while.

Unfortunately I had turned of archiving so I can't roll back to the previously working version.
Reply #44 Top
This issue has popped up 3 times for me since I posted Dave Marquis' response to my initial bug report (once since today's update). Though it doesn't seem to happen quite as much as previously....It does still happen. Meaning, in my opinion, this is a WB issue as opposed to an install issue or registry issue.