* Mods- Please feel free to move this thread to the appropriate sub-forum once the culprit software is decided on. *

I have an infuriating problem and have had it for a while only now it is a lot worse. I am assuming the problem lies with WindowBlinds but that's a guess. I'm also running Fences (which is slow and sends my Explorer to 100% CPU if I move the mouse pointer over my desktop icons), WindowFX (sluggish but reliable, my computer is old) and other Stardock software (but I can't see them causing problems).

Without warning, but often when resuming from having locked my computer, Explorer will crash. This is quite common with Windows 10 and what normally happens with or without WindowBlinds is that Explorer will reload albeit with fewer icons in the Notification Area of the Taskbar; inconvenient but the computer is still usable. What is happening now however is that I am left with a Taskbar with nothing on it except the Start Button and Find button, the clock and an empty Notification Area except for WindowBlinds' icon in it hence why I'm pinning the blame on it. The keyboard shortcut to go to the desktop stops working although I can still task-switch but the computer becomes more or less unusable and I am forced to restart. As I say, this might have happened once every few days after hibernating and resuming but now it's happened three times today so the problem is gradually getting worse!

I tend to prefer using older themes and I hear that they're not great with Windows 10 but I actually have very few problems with skinning when using them. Granted, some themes are terrible on this modern OS but the better ones usually have good compatibility which is fantastic and it's fun to go back 10, 15 or even more years ago; back to my youth. Sometimes, some text will be lost in the same colour as the window's background and often Firefox has a strange problem where there's something overlapping the top right corner of the window for some reason so none of the buttons there can be clicked. I can live with these problems; I can have Firefox not be skinned etc.. There is one other problem (the crash aside) that is frustrating and might be linked to the crash. When I click the button to show hidden Notification Area icons the computer will freeze up, often the Taskbar will disappear and if I'm lucky, the menu will appear in the top left of the screen. Then the taskbar will reappear. If I'm really lucky it'll appear normally but this is rare. Sometimes this behaviour will cause the crash as explained above but sometimes I can't avoid clicking that button. Why is this happening? If (mostly) everything else works absolutely fine? Is it linked to this crash? I also have noticed that I often can no longer hide the Taskbar in settings but I don't want to do that anyway because I want to see the skin!

Yes, more modern skins don't seem to have this problem and might not cause the crash but I have little interest in them and besides, WindowBlinds' heyday was years ago when skinning and computer gadgets were popular (and we didn't have bloody mobile phones). The achievements of skinners back in the day is mind-blowing (and usually their efforts were provided for free!!), especially when considering the ages of these young creators. Are they doomed to stay in the past? Like I say, some old skins are fine while others are problematic, even if all elements of skinning are included in the skin.

If anyone can shed any light on this (and why it's gradually getting worse and worse!) I'd really appreciate it because at this rate I might have to give up on skinning and finally grow up. Please don't make me do that...