WINDOWS 2000 Users

Are there any other windows 2000 users having difficulty getting WB to display the backgrounds that come with skins?

thanks,
glenda

I am not to sure about this glenda, but I think Windows 2000 does not have the capability to skin everything like WindowsXP (e.g. shell styles). At least thats what I heard from other people.

Those backgrounds do not display in Win2K by design, only XP. The reason the "About WindowBlinds..." dialog shows version 4.3 Build 120NXP (and the ToolTip still says WindowBlinds 4.2, BTW) is that the Win2K build hasn't changed since that version - all the incremental changes since have been XP-only. I believe it will be updated with the 4.5 release next month, but what additional skinning functionality, if any, is being added to 2k (or is under development for 2k) I don't know. There are limits to what 2k GUI can do and it's possible SD has decided not to devote further effort to development of workarounds for those limitations. I don't know that to be the case, however.

SD's versioning conventions can be a bit confusing, since the version string listed in SDC is not the version string used for "Help/About..." or the "About..." item in the SysTray context menu. They have their reasons for this, I assume, but it appears those reasons are company-centric rather than customer-centric.

Cheers,
Daiwa

thanks very much Daiwa!

I know I posted to you on the usenet group too.

Glenda ... U R hard 2 catch up with. Email me.
Deb Brazo

Why doesn't the taskbar change to the appearance of the skin(s) that are downloaded. It seems to simply add a bubble effect but the full color and overall roundness of the taskbars in any and all skins seems to be rather lacking. Is there a fix for this?

IMO, it really doesn't make sense to devote any further resources to Win2K skinning since mainstream support from MS ended.


Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ

That's a cop-out answer. Windows 2000 was and still is a solid operating system, so there is no reason not to make Windowblinds work "properly" with it. Be forced to go to XP...be forced to go to Vista...not!

At some point a decision has to be made on whether putting more money into supports a system that is on "extended support" is going to bring in new revenue.  The other consideration is what features the system can support.

It's not a cop-out answer, it might be the best available one.

Drop an email to support@stardock.com.  Maybe there is something that can be done. This is a community forum and the number of Win2k users that might be able to chime in is pretty low.

Exactly! As much as I despise Vista right now I do accept the fact that in a few years or less I will have to switch if I want to take advantage of the bells and whistles offered.   

There are good reasons why WindowBlinds 5 and above do not work on Windows 2000 and why WB4 does not support skinning the taskbar with the XP specific parts on 2000.

I am sorry but Windows 2000 is simply not as capable as Windows XP in these areas.

With Win2K - you need to use a combination of WindowBlinds and ObjectBar to get the XP look of taskbar skinning. It isn't perfect, but it is a lot better than the default Win2K offering. (IMHO)

Hello, Einy -

I agree with you. Glad to see you still hanging in there.