Being un-shelled...

from WinCustomize Forums
One of the 'fun' things about shell themeing is that if, or rather, WHEN you are in the middle of converting a theme from one standard[ish] LiteSTEP format that you are used-to, to the OTS standard, 'things' can go wrong....

There you are, staring at a 'stuck' cursor, waiting for the theme to load...there's a thrashing of drive action, but nothing happens....
Ctrl-Shift-Esc and you discover that litestep.exe is zipping along merrily at 100% cpu and 650 meg of ram....now THAT'S LIGHT...
You kill the process, and ShellON pops up to get you reloaded, while you do the 'right thing'[tm] and comment out various module lines in the step until all that's left is a popup and a desktop.....STILL no luck.
Hmmm...curiouser and curiouser...
You pop your head back into the images folder and....where's a4.png...otherwise known as the 'PopupBottomPix'?
It's conspicuous by its absence.
You deftly comment out one line in the step , et, voila!
One missing image and your whole shell can be fragged.
I've been using LiteSTEP exclusively for over 5 years.....and STILL screw up.
[Damn I must be thick]....
2,289 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Too much of a headache for me jafo. I tried litestep about a year ago, and i'd say it took about 20min. trying to configure it, then ADHD took over and i was done with it

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Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I know there is good reason for the theme standard, but it is a pain in da butt for the people it is trying to help, imho. Before, your theme was guarenteed to work, you distributed *everything* to make sure of it. Now, if a theme is misconfigured in reference to their directory structure, or if the theme is out of date, you have a farked shell. That leads your average newcomer to reinstall windows *gag*. Maybe they need a set of manditory things to happen "onload" (i.e. a set of basic functionality), or a default theme loads.

Like I say, i know the arguments, and I agree with them, but it still feels a bit... kludged? I am holding off any development til something shiny and new appears.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
well it was guaranteed to work IF they had pointed to the right spot for the shell, which I guess is a big if, with all the re-install rants I have seen...
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
hm, a missing popup image never caused problems for me. are you using any obscure module like popup9.3 ?
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
moshi...it was the popup2 included with the 20020530 Indie build...

LoadModule $ModulesDir$jdesk.dll ;version 0.70
LoadModule $LitestepDir$popup2.dll ;version 1.12.2
LoadModule $LitestepDir$systray2.dll ;version 1.74
LoadModule $ModulesDir$mzscript.dll ;version 0.7
LoadModule $LitestepDir$shortcut2.dll ;version 1.2
LoadModule $ModulesDir$tasks.dll ;version 0.89
LoadModule $LitestepDir$hotkey.dll ;version 1.6
LoadModule $LitestepDir$sysvwm.dll ;version (20020530)
LoadModule $ModulesDir$geekamp.dll ;version 1.9.61 (Azathoth)
LoadModule $ModulesDir$rainmation.dll ;version 0.8
LoadModule $ModulesDir$label.dll ;version 1.5 (Maduin)
LoadModule $ModulesDir$chronos.dll ;version 1.5 (Maduin)
LoadModule $ModulesDir$ckhotspots.dll ;version 2.2
LoadModule $ModulesDir$miniwall.dll ;version 20020627 (e-sushi)

I do sometimes load an older one to get the background painting the popup...but in this case, no...

I guess it's a 'Jafo thing'...
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
hehe Jafo the joys of litestepping? I remember playing around w/ that a long time ago, one wrong move and panic city until you can find the culprit.
DX is all I use now when I play w/ that sort of stuff just easier and less time consuming (for me)
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Betcha it's the jdesk.....cos at one stage all I had loaded was the desk and the popup...and it still 'demanded' a graphic...
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
eye candy and no headaches... hehe
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Desk and popup is all you need anyhow.

Fortunately there are shell managers to help out, or altennatively you can always start any shell from the task manager.

Now when your task manager crashes... then you've got a problem!