SOLUTION for compatibility problem with Windowblinds and Microsoft Live Mail/Messenger

Setting that option excludes the app from skinning.

To the best of my knowledge WindowBlinds 7 was already working just fine with Live Messenger.

^ and you're absolutely correct.

well i am definately sure that i did not hallucinate....  btw i use windows xp pro sp3....

just google for that problem and you see others had similar problems....

disabling visual styles the way i told definately does NOT exclude livemail from being skinned, because i didnt exclude it, i just disabled support of microsoft msstyles...

i am not a programmer so dont ask me why it worked...

i am lookin at it right now... again do you want to tell me i hallucinate ???????

and "to the best of my knowledge" hmmm how shall i say it... has a different meaning then "i have proven the fact...

i can definately state as a proven fact, before disabling visualstyles livemail crashed, after doin like i sayd it doesnt

before you accuse someone telling wrong info you should proove it and not just tell "from the best of your knowledge...

also, do you think you help anyone with what you sayd in your post... i dont think so....

The 'to the best of his knowledge' is because he wrote the program...

OOOOOKAYY ?!?

Now please dont get me wrong here, even if he wrote it, seriously, wouldnt you be surprised if someone comes along and tells you:

"Hey that what you see there with your own eyes, its not happening... you are seein things there..." wouldnt that surprise you too ?

I mean, this is real life, not StarTrek. Hey and i do LOVE StarTrek...

(oh and i believe, he didnt program Live Mail right ? So did you test on a XP machine if its true what happened, or just guessed ?

See what i mean with prooving the fact ?)

Ok here come the juicy details...

Normally if a program crashes under WB, what do you do first ? ... right, you try to exclude it...

thats what i did, went into the folder c:\Programme\Windows Live\Mail\ found wlmail.exe and excluded it... whoops that didnt help.

LiveMail still crashing...

And why could i say it was WB causing the crash ? Well i unloaded WB, and voila LiveMail runs fine...

Ok what do all forum hosters say? before you bother anyone try to find the solution yourself... (google)

I found, wow, i am not the only one hallucinating a crashing LiveMail... and WOW even more, someone found a solution !!!

I just couldnt find the solution in the WB forums, and wanted nothing but being helpful when i posted it !!!

Now if you watch close, in the solution i disabled Visual Designs on wlcomm.exe , and not on wlmail.exe !!

Thats why i could say that there is a solution that helps without excluding wlmail .. and yayyyy that did the trick.

Please let me get away without posting screenshots of the issue and just believe me, ...without doin so, Live Mail crashed....

after disabling visual designs on wlcomm.exe, no more crashing happens. And i see LiveMail nicely framed with my favorite blind

Now one last thing... I have to admit that i did not proove one fact:

Is disabling the visual style the same then excluding something from being skinned by WB ? If so, then thanks for letting me know

I might have been wrong when i thought disabling Visual Design is only related to XPs internal use of msstyles...

So Mr. Neil Banfield, i hope that you dont feel offended now, and if you wrote WB, then you did a outstanding Job ! and i still believe:

WB is the best Windows theming software ever !!!

Live long and prosper !

Sincerely

Cytraveler

I believe you are reading more in Neil Banfield's statement quoted below than what is actually there.

I don't read anything in his comment that suggests you are hallucinating. He is merely stating that to his knowledge Windows Live Messenger and WindowBlinds 7 work well together.

Just because your solution worked for you doesn't mean that it is necessary for everyone or that there is a bug in WindowBlinds that needs correcting. Perhaps another unrelated program you have running is causing this issue with WB 7 and Live Messenger. Without knowing exactly what you have your system configured to makes this a wild guess at best.

Bottom line is that Neil Banfield did not make any accusation that you were hallucinating.

Oh my... come on..  yes i was exaggerating a bit when i called that "accusing me to hallucinate..."

So what.. where is your sense of humor ? Yes i get a bit upset when someone tells me that somethin i just experienced myself, is not true..

I am not Vulcan, i am Human and have emotions..

i sayd livemail crashes under WB..

he sayd "to the best of his knowledge" its not...

in that i read he is guessing it should work, but have not tested it...

also i stated nowhere that WB has a bug there... to be honest in my mind i was even more blaming microsoft on that...

also the fact that i took the helping info from someone else who had a similar problem and solved it, tells me i am not alone with my experience. (a wild guess is somethin else...) So the solution might be not workin for everyone, yes right, but at  least it helped for some...

And again, my motivation for the post was only to be helpful !! (Seeing the reaction i caused, i might think twice next time...)

Where i live people are saying thanks for even only a try to help... even when it fails... because they see the good will behind it...

My System btw. is (or was at that time) a almost blank XPpro SP3 installation, that made it pretty easy to guess where the problem is..

(also unloading WB solved it too)

Also, in the last line of my last post i wrote "So Mr. Neil Banfield, i hope that you dont feel offended now,... and so on"

That was my way to say excuse me to him...

So why does now someone else need to speak up for him and make him look like he cant do that himself ?

Bye

I've purchased, downloaded and installed the latest version of WindowBlinds on my main PC too, and right after I did my MSN Live Messenger started crashing too, even though I excluded the app from being skinned. I'm at work atm, but I will try that solution when I get home and report back.

Until then - thx Cytraveler for posting your fix

There was an issue back with WindowBlinds 6 and Windows Live apps, which was resolved in that version.  I still see this from time to time, even with the latest WindowBlinds.  Make sure you have all the latest updates to both applications.  Although we have not been able to reproduce this internally at Stardock, I have seen enough reports of the issue to know that it's not just "made up".  Worst case scenario, excluding wlcomm.exe from skinning seems to clear this up.

I was quite happy as a Windowblinds 6 user with excluding wlcomm.exe to solve the problem and maintain a good look with Windows Live products under XP.  Since recently upgrading to Windowblinds 7, I have been horrified to find that all Windows Live applications appear to be totally excluded in a way that is hard coded into Windowblinds 7, meaning that if they are maximised, or throw up a pop-up (e.g. spell checking) the Windows Classic theme appears.  That's crass and horrible, frankly.  They looked fine (better, anyway) using their own skins with Windowblinds still skinning their full-screen modes and pop-ups, and I don't understand this at all.   Can I get around it?