Random Skins & Wallpapers

do you have your desktop icons hidden?

do you have web items locked?

do you have anything else that manages wallpaper that might be causing conflict?

also

are you using anything else that uses an 'overlay' - like iconx, desktopx, etc

No. I am not using any of those. Is my situation the exception? Does this wallpaper randomization work correctly for other people? Even though I'm rebooting my system it should be showing truly random wallpapers?

okay, but..

and about...

hadn't played with it so i just tried the hourly thing

picked change every hour nad selected all

hit apply - got a soldi blue background

found it in the walls, a small 25x25 tiler

unselected all and just checked about 10 - reapplied

same blue background

checked regular wall settings and it was set to use skin's wall - 1st option on the left scroll = skin I'm using doesn't have one - set it to one of the walls I selected (without applying) went back to the random and applied from there

wall switched to the one i selected... now I have to wait and hour

as far as the sames ones over and over - that can happen on 'random' since it's actually hard to a true random

Sorry for not being overly clear. What I meant is that the answer was 'no' to everything you had asked. I understand that random means exactly that but I was just curious as to whether I was seeing something that other people don't. I mean, I do have lots and lots of wallpapers selected to be part of the rotation in Windowblinds yet I keep seeing the same few over and over. That just seems a little odd. Even if I only had 100 wallpapers I should think that I would see a little more variety than the ones that I'm seeing. And I still can't understand why it sometimes picks a blank desktop background. Regardless, I do like Windowblinds a lot. I just wish I could understand what it's doing!

if you have multiple folder included where 'wallpapers' looks, you probably have some color tilers in there

Where do I tell where it's pulling wallpapers from? I currently have 166 images in c:\windows\web\wallpaper and all of these are selected to be included in the Windowblinds randomization. Yet I still keep seeing the same few over and over. I'm starting to think that this program has a bug in it. Where do I report an official tech support issue?

email support@stardock.com

by clicking the hammer/wrench

you will also see them by clicking the 'thmbnail' option to the left of that

you'll also see them scrolling through the thumbnails in the randomize section - double click anything you don't want

I've confirned the location of my wallpapers. Regardless, I'm still seeing the same images used again and again. I recall this problem from earlier versions of this software, too. I emailed Stardock support but I don't think anything will come of that, as I really don't think this product's randomization feature works. I would, however, like to have official confirmation of that.

depends on the random

techically, even with true random - you could get just the same one over and oever

mine's been changing every hour - haven't seen any blank colors yet - made sure none were selected - but I haven't paid attention to which one's show up when

I'm going to get some data together. I'll go through at least 50 hourly changes and see what happens. I can already see from about 20 hours that what's happening is not just computer fluke. Whoever wrote the randomization code should take another look at it. It's been 2 days and I haven't gotten a response from Stardock support, either.

hope you're not counting the weekend, they're off then

did you get the auto reply?

did you check your spam?

I forgot about that weekend thing. No auto reply, though. Maybe the whole thing is all in my head so it will be interesting to see what kind of data I can compile. I'm not going to rule out the chance that is is just coincidence that I'm seeing a select few over and over. It's theoretically possible but should be less likely the more images available to choose from. Regardless, it'll be a fun little experiment for me. It just sucks that I have to wait a minimum of 1 hour to get the next piece of data. I'm glad I didn't decide to do a sample size of 1000!

I have completed my data gathering of the first 50 random hourly wallpaper changes on my system. The results follow.

WindowBlinds currently has 180 images set up for use as wallpaper on my system. Logically, that means that each time Windowblinds goes to pick a random wallpaper, each image has a 1 in 180, or 0.6% chance of being selected. That would be the case if the application code was correctly written.

In my test of 50 hourly changes, WindowBlinds used only 24 different wallpapers. The most commonly used one was used a total of 6 times,a highly unusual number of occurrence when there is only a 0.6% chance of that one being selected.  A number of others were used 4, 3, or 2 times. In many cases the same wallpaper would follow after the previous one, even thought WindowBlinds is not set to use them in sequence, nor do the images appear in sequence in WindowBlinds or in their respective system folders. In fact, sometimes they aren't even in the same directory.

My conclusion is that the code that this product feature is using is not working correctly, as I originally suspected. I also have received no response from Stardock, automatic or otherwise, regarding my email sent to support@stardock.com. It has been 7 days since I sent it. I would appreciate it if they would at least man up and admit that this doesn't work. Do they read these forums?

I'm thinking I might next test the Random Skin feature as it seems that I'm also, no surprise, seeing the same skins repeated over and over.

I hope that they don't use the same randomization code in any of their games.

if it's not in spam,

then they probably didn't get it

did you do it as a straight email or via the support page > submit a ticket ?

the auto reply is just that, auto - you should have gotten one with a ticket reference

I just used the email address in the earlier post in this thread. Is it better to submit it as a support ticket? I know it didn't hit my system as spam because I review all flagged messages.

either way is supposed to work

either way you're supposed to be able to sign in at the support ticket page and check the status

since you say you already sent an email with no auto reply - try the ticket option

are you using the same email address you have with stardock?

Yeah, same email. I'll try filling out a ticket. But since you're the only one that's participated in this thread, what's your take? Do my results, including the situations with the same sequence of files, sound like those of a typical randomization. With almost 200 different options to choose from, I should've seen much more variation. And the same files being chosen in sequence must be the hell out of some odds somewhere. I have no intention of putting in the time, though, to figure out how unlikely my results should be!

there was a post on it a long while back, but I can't find & can't recall all of it, but I think Neil said something about the formula might need work - my take = it's not really the same as a random sample size or randomly picking numbers from 1-1000 - since the walls can be selectively chosen the formula would have to take into consideration specific missing numbers

i've read all your replies bichur. thanks so much for all the information. it helped me.