Holy Hell!

OD Caused some massive problems

from Stardock Forums
I recently renewed my OD order and am having all kinds of trouble using it on my system. Behavior includes: Mouse button assignments randomly worked and stopped working, Programs would refuse to launch- either from start menu or explorer, some programs would crash on startup. System was 100% stable prior to OD install, and is stable now that I uninstalled everything. BTW, had to go into safe mode to uninstall as stardock central would not run normally.

Had Stardock Central installed and updated to most current version.
Other OD programs installed were: Windowblinds, WindowFX, IconX (when this program was installed, there was noticable system slowdown - it was uninstalled pretty quickly), rightclick, enhanced dialog, and DesktopX.

I plan to install each one individually to see which program the behavior reappears on, but wanted to check here to see if anyone is aware of these things happening with a certain app. Thanks for any help.

Marc Peters

My system specs:
AMD Barton 2500 (Not OCed)
1 Gig Ram
40 gb Hard drive for windows
120 gb Hard drive for data
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Windows XP Home SP2

Other programs in startup:
*PTFB Prp (a mouse scripting program)
*Panekiller (right mouse button menu - was disabled for right click)
*Hotsync Manager (Palm sync program)
*ProcessTamer (Automatically lowers programs priority when using system load)
Logitech Setpoint (For my mouse)
*AdMuncher (Removes ads and stuff)
ATIPTA (vid card)
*Bootskin Startup Jobs
gcasServ (MS Antispyware)
KHALMNPR.EXE (logitech mouse)
*mbm5 (hardware monitor)
*Netlimiter (allows me to limit bandwidth certain programs use)
nod32kui (Antivirus)
Outpost Firewall (Firewall)
*Run Startup monitor (Watches registry and startup folders and lets me know when a program sets itself up to startup)

Programs with an asterick I removed from startup to see if they had any affect, none of them did.
9,749 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
freegoo,

Not sure which program would create problems for sure.

I run WindowBlinds, IconPackager, and ObjectDock Plus (with magnification off) and have no issues with slowing the computer down. ObjectDock does use some of the display resources, but does not slow the system down any more than loading any other quality program would.

I would recommend installing and testing WindowBlinds and IconPackager to see the potential for these programs running on your system - then move on from there.

If I had to guess, I would say WindowFX is going to affect the system more than the others.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, I made an Image and started playing. Found the 2 culprits I think.

1. Enabling hardware support in WindowFX for pixel shading etc, causes the mouse skips and general performance drop. Dragging windows around sure looks nice, but disabled this and found a nice stable system.

2. Enhanced Dialog. Very nice idea, love the thing when it works. But unfortunately most the time it's crap. After installing most programs will not start, including ED. Can't uninstall since Stardock Central won't start either. Even going into safe mode was no good. I HOPE Stardock is working on this program, because when it works it simply divine. Right now I'm cursing it though because it looks like my backup image prior to installing is corrupt. Blech.

But at least now I know what was causing 99.999% of my problems.
Curtains - Customize Windows with additional styles
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well, that's why it's still got that "beta" tag on it - and as it's not got to 1.0 yet, I'd definitely consider it to be still "in testing".

You should probably let support@stardock.com know about your troubles, though.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah sorry, I know... I was tired and grumpy last nite. Working with a new backup program at 4 in the morning can do that to you.

I'll shoot off an email to tech support later in the day. Like I said, would love to see this become a stable product... it was pretty cool when it did work.

Thanks.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
As to #1 I discovered something today. Digging through my settings I found that my 8X AGP support wasn't enabled. Re-enabling it and checking BIOS gave me no results. So I dug out my motherboards system disc and installed my NForce All-In-One drivers, reenabled 8X, and rebooted. Viola checking the enable hardware acceleration in WindowFX doesn't cause any stuttering and everything is working perfectly there.

Booyah!

Now if I can only find something on my PC pertaining to #2...
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

I think we found and fixed this over the holiday weekend. It wasn't showing up for everyone, but some people reported being unable to drag items around on ObjectDock.

The fix is an updated iprepair.dll that's part of IP 3.00a (which I've made available via Stardock Central or use the page at stardock.com/support to be resent the full download link). You'll need a reboot after installing it.

Failing that, Start / Run / regsvr32.exe /u "c:\program files\stardock\object desktop\iconpackager\iprepair.dll" would work around it, but then you wouldn't have the custom icons you've applied displayed inside other apps (where possible).