A few WB 5 Bugs I've encountered

from WinCustomize Forums
I've discovered a few bugs while playing with WB 5, none which have been fixed up to the very last beta.

- My 'Open with' dialog box as well as others have black backgrounds making it impossible to read the text.

- For the last few builds it seems that everytime I reboot Windowblinds defaults the classic colour scheme to Luna, and not that of the WB skin chosen, it also reverts the shell animations.

- Using Cursor XP, the cursor seems to lag behind the dragged window, or simply stay in place until a refresh.

- It seems that windows 'jerk' when I first try and move them, only large ones, possibly caused by a CPU spike wheich I notice when I first move a per-pixel window. This may be my graphics card (Intel integrated 845g 64MB) But Other per-pixel programs/skins have never jerked or lagged no matter how big the window with this card.


Here are my Specs:

2.53 Ghz Intel P4 w/Intel Integrated 845G 64MB, 512MB of DDR RAM.

WindowBlinds 5 BETA 2 Troubleshooting Report:

STATUS : WB+ SRV+ HLP+ UI+ TRAY+

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC.

WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC

Your machine supports per pixel borders on WindowBlinds skins.

You have one monitor in total.

(COMPAQ FS740 Color Monitor) 1 is attached to Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller

Wblind.dll 2005/11/17 16:27:10
Wbsrv.dll 2005/11/17 17:29:16
Wbconfig.exe 2005/11/15 21:57:02
Wbload.exe 2005/11/02 13:36:34
Wbhelp.dll 2004/09/18 16:37:00
Wbui.dll 2005/10/17 10:55:14
Tray.dll 2005/11/02 13:28:26

And I also have 'Enable if you have corrupted titlebar buttons & text backgrounds' checked.

and as a side note, all I've used on the latest betas are per-pixel enabled skins, so I have no idea if these bugs happen with regular skins yet. Any help/answers/remedies would be greatly appreciated.
windowblinds
10,473 views 21 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Just my thought, but I think it's your onboard graphics. But don't quote me, I don't use Intel.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Indeed. But, quite frankly, onboard graphics isnt an excuse for these bugs as some never happened with WB 4, and the others work fine with other programs using per pixel windows. All I've heard so far is that it's my graphics card, well thats not acceptable, because it isnt, a 64MB card is plenty capable of handling these things without lag or bugginess, as other programs have shown to me in the past. I'd like a WB dev (frogboy) to converse with me, because I feel I'm getting the run around with others who claim to know what they're talking about.
SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
But don't quote me, I don't use Intel


There's only two posts, you and I. I don't see where I claimed to know what I am talking about.(edited by author for depth) Sorry I could not help you, just trying to be friendly.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
was referring to support in IRC, not about your post, sorry for the confusion
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks! Hope you get this resolved!
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

kmkkid: If you spoke to Nakor online then he will have told you that the problem with dragging windows is indeed with your card.

The intel 845G chipset is over 3 years old now and chipsets are usually slower than the current generation low end graphics card when they come out.  I also believe the 64MB you mention is taken from the system memory & therefore is not dedicated to the graphics.  This means the graphics has rather limited memory bandwidth.

I am fairly certain we have reproduced basically 100% cpu usage during window dragging with per pixel skins when using low end intel integrated graphics, which points to the graphics card simply becoming either fillrate or bandwidth limited.  This would explain the lagging CursorXP cursor as well as there is no spare cpu to update things.

If you use non per pixel skins then things should work just as they did with WindowBlinds 4 on your machine.  Or you could set windows to not use full window dragging.  Unfortunately we cannot make your card any quicker.

Regarding the fact that other per pixel windows do not lag, I should point out that they do not have the same needs as WindowBlinds does.  WB has to work with all the apps running on your system and in general windows skinned by WB will be bigger.

Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Ok. I can live with the little jerk, but I cannot deal with the black dialog backgrounds and system colours reverting after a reboot, any ideas on whats causing that, I'm fairly certain thats not a card issue as WB 4 was fine in this regard. Thanks.

As a side note: I have no idea what this means, but - If I go into display properties and turn off hardware acceleration, the windows do not jerk at all, as long as I dont re-apply a skin or reboot (cause obviously this would disable the per-pixel effects with no hwaccel.) Odd but maybe you could look into that? Of course if I crank up acceleration again, the jerking comes back.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I would guess that in your case the cpu is better at doing per pixel than your graphics card is.

Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
There are going to be cards/drivers that some of the new skinning features do not work on with this build. From Stardock Central. Sorry but this applies to you kmkkid. After I got my first computor a year ago the first thing I learned was that the onboard graphics cards were only useful for the basic things that a computor displays. The first game I bought would not run at all. First upgrade was to ATI 9200 128MB, worked adequately for 10 months, not great but I could play the few games I bought. I know you are not talking about games but when it comes to graphics of any sort beyond displaying basic programs you have to upgrade to keep up with the new programming. Luck would have it I made a slight upgrade to a NVidia 5500 256 MB just before WB5 came out. Needed it for another program and game I bought. Read the threads about ATI 9200 and the problems and work arounds people have had to go through to get these cards to work and they have twice the memory you have. It's like buying a XBox 360 game and expecting it to run on XBox. I don't think it will work.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I take back my whiney bitching. I discovered what was causing both the non per-pixel bugs I was describing. Another program was set to run at startup which was changing the classic style. Sorry guys

Could you anyone advise me of a cheap card they may be using which runs WB5 without any lag? Thanks.
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
kmkkid, you aren't "listening". If you can't "live" with the black background issue and the classic color reverts, the only thing you can do is upgrade to a graphics card that has support for the features, or use 4.6. AND I don't see anywhere a money back guarantee. It is not the fault of Stardock or the product, but your hardware. It is also not the fault of Stardock or the product that you make a "mere" $9/hour. There are ways to budget the $50 to buy a decent video card. Neither Neil nor I or anyone at Stardock, for that matter, is telling you to go and buy a high-end card for $500. Like Majic7 puts it:
It's like buying a XBox 360 game and expecting it to run on XBox.




Stop, cool down and think about things. You have a good system with the 2.5 g CPU and 512 of memory, but the graphics card just doesn't have enough bandwidth nor memory nor driver support for what you expect it to do. Again, this is your hardware restricting you, not the WB product. It's not always the speed of your CPU that dictates how fast your machine runs, or what it has the capability of running. WB runs on my laptop, a Pentium II @ 366mhz, but I can't run WB 5 because the laptop only has 8mb graphics memory and no support for per-pixel graphics. Read up on some hardware. Your reaction is misplaced and overdone. I hope you come to your senses soon and stop blaming Stardock for not giving you support. It seems like you half expect them to make WB 5 work for you and you only. Senseless behavior. I'm not trying to attack you, but you are not "listening" to reason. Good Luck with finding your solution. Happy Skinning.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
How long it take you to write that? I edited my post like one minute after I posted it. I was venting.

Thanks for summing up my unfounded anger for me though, greatly appreciated.
Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I run the ATI X700 Pro (AGP 256 MB) card, which retails for $200 and is well beyond the needs of WB5.

Therefore, if you decide to upgrade your card, you could easily go with an ATI (9600, 9800, X700) series, or for nVidia (5500, 6600) series.

The series numbers indicate the chipset model produced by these companies, all of which you can find on third-party vendor's circuit board adapters for various prices (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, eVGA, Powercolor, etc.)

ATI also offers their own brand card which includes their chipset and circuit board adapter.

You should be able to find an adequate card between $70 and $200, depending on which chipset you choose.

Note - this assumes you have an AGP slot, and are not considering using a legacy PCI slot video card - which may provide a little improvement based on increased memory (say a 128 MB card), and perhaps better efficiency in displaying images - but nothing like an AGP card.

Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I found a card for PCI that works great for WB5. BFG NVidia 5500 OC 256MB at Walmart for 130$. If I had known about such things when I bought my computor I wouldn't have bought one with PCI but I'm stuck with it for a while. They also have a AGP card, same specs.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm running WB5 on a ATI all in wonder 9200(Radeon) and works fine and payed 100$ for the card...
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
kmkkid: sorry if it is a little lengthy, you did seem out of whack. No offense taken I hope.

Seems like the ATI Radeon 9200 has the most issues, reading through the problem threads. I have not seen any complaints on nVidia cards. That BFG that Majic7 has is priced that way cuz BFG adds some tweaking to their cards, overclocking them for one, latencies are different, etc. But I would go with that if I had the dough. As it was, I ordered mine from TigerDirect. Paid $49 plus shipping for it. It's a 5500. And with some research you can overclock these, not as high-speed as the one Majic7 has, but some. It's a good card for the money. There's no lag. It shouldn't hold your Pentium back either. Me, I'm saving up for the next step up...6600 nvidia. Hope you find a card to your liking soon. Good Luck!
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I had a similar problem with a few programs with the windows
a little jerky. I'm running a HP 2.53 Ghz with 1G ram and Intel 845G/GE graphics. I installed 512MB ram to make 1G
and updated the Intel driver and have had no problem since.
I'm running WB 5 and everything is working great. Try adding
some ram and update the driver.I got my updated driver from Microsoft Updates.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
Go to newegg or dumpinggoods. You can pick up a refurbished card for 1/2 the price, if not less. Many people shrink away from refurbished products, but I have built several computers using various refurbished itemws and have never had a problem.
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Seems like the ATI Radeon 9200 has the most issues


Beg to differ. My ATI Radeon 9200 has worked flawlessly with all the beta versions of WB5.
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Anote on cards...best buy has X700 on sale for $99, 1/2 price. I just swapped-out my old RADEON 7000 AGP for X700 PRO AGP. It went seamlessly, about 1/2-hour or less, even while eating waffles with one hand . On an Intel D850GB with 512 RAMBUS RAM. Now backing up to swap WB4.6 for WB5. Will post on WC forums, if aok.


Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I bought a Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 (256MB) for $80 CAD and everything is smooth as silk now, thanks for the comments