Stardock/Object Desktop Complaints

I purchased Object Desktop about two weeks ago; I have not yet used any part of it with the confidence that no problems will arise. In fact after terrible windows performance (crashes, freezes, broken icons, broken programs eg. some no longer open at all) I have reformatted my system more than three times already, just to ensure I was rid of anything connected with the software.

My system is a beast, if I do say so myself, WinXPHome fully up to date from msupdate along with WMP11 (beta) and IE7 (rc1) and I'm a member of many of the Windows Live beta programs (mail, favourites, toolbar etc.) and while I realise these could cause possible conflicts I have no problem running the most demanding of programs and Windows has always performed perfectly, until I started using Stardock products... (Granted 9x crashed a lot in its day but XP has never broke on me unless I was screwing with something)

The last time I reformatted I made sure to give it a few days of normal everyday use. I have had zero problems at all, I have not once had to open task manager and end some process that fucked up. So I again installed Stardock Central and got my Object Desktop, almost immediately I have programs freezing on me. I was going to include screenshots with this very report, but for some reason mspaint won't even open now!? (All my other image programs take too long to start up every time I want to paste a screenie) It seems to start up because it's right there in the task manager but I can't see anything.

I am going to list everything that I have run into that seems not to work as it should. You guys can do what you want with this info; I have given up faith in any Stardock products. I will not recommend Stardock to anyone I know and will probably discourage anyone that asks me about your gear. I had it in mind to buy Galactic Civilisations II because it looked good on reviews, but after these last couple of weeks everything Stardock related is banned from my system. I'll keep an eye on the progress of Object Desktop over the next year but I think you can kiss any renewal of my account goodbye. I can't just look at a nice UI it *must* function well too.

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Component Tray:

Seems like a good thing, saves about a second more than going to the Start Menu at the other side of the screen. Maybe it's of more use when there are themes that remove the Start Menu applied. Only problem was every time I hovered over the start-up option in the rightclick menu everything freezes, the first time I tried saw it said something about Stardock in there but I don't even know what that part of menu is even for because it crashes every time I move the cursor over it.

Enhanced File Dialog:

Pretty good features but it would have been a whole lot better if it remembered my settings more often. In the open/save dialogs I kept changing the view to List because in many folders I have tons of files that take too long to scroll through when the default Detail view with lines keeps reasserting itself. Also in some dialogs there is a New Folder button in other dialogs it's not there. There was not an option to show a New Folder button so I couldn't change it to always show. I discovered how much I miss that button when it's gone.

Object Edit:

After I installed all associated icons (.ini .txt etc) are now the ugly default unknownfiletype icons. Nothing I tried helped to correct this, and none of the rebuild/repair options worked including the one in TweakUI (which has been working fine for me since the Win9x version). Eventually I had to manually fix the icons and associations myself. There are tons of text files on any given system I can't believe no one else has not had or noticed this problem since the whole idea of Object Desktop is to make shit look pretty.
In the update history I noticed this line under the new rc : ' (*) Fixed Install / Uninstall to properly remove associations ( Registry Cleaners may prevent uninstall ) '
Perhaps this addresses my problem here? I am using only the current release programs from Object Desktop.

IconPackager etc:

For starters why do I keep needing to reassociate icon files with the various icon programs in Object Desktop? Surely these programs don't conflict with each other? They should work together! Constantly changing associations between IconDeveloper to IconPackager to IconX when I open each is probably a great way to fuck things up. If the separate programs don't conflict I can't imagine what else besides Windows itself is taking back associations because I don't have any other kind of icon manipulation software besides Object Desktop.

Icons are one of the most visible things that change when using themes; it really sucks when this kind of software breaks things. I usually restore to windows default settings before applying a new theme just to make sure that I can see what all the changes are, unfortunately the options don't seem to work properly in any of the Object Desktop utilities. If I for any reason wanted to remove Object Desktop I am left with a nasty mess of a UI to clean up.

Missing Url History Icon: The ' Restore Windows Default ' option in IconPackager points to C:\WINDOWS\system32\shdocvw.dll,36 this icon doesn't exist on my system, the proper place is C:\WINDOWS\system32\ieframe.dll,36 (or ieframe.dll,32 maybe) Possibly the IconPackager doesn't know where to look because of IE7 changing things up (or is my computer just so different than everyone else’s?)

Missing Hotmail Icon: On the Start Menu you can change default Email provider, while Outlook Express is chosen the icon is good, but since I use Hotmail, that's what I chose as default. The ' Restore Windows Default ' option in IconPackager points to C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll.exe "%ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\hmmapi.dll",0. I'm no techie but that looks like it should work, that's where the icon is on my system. However is there suppose to be a space between Program and Files like the actual folder name? How come I can't edit and save the Windows Default icon set to fix it? (Yeah it asks if I want to save changes before exit or I can use the menu option but neither actually save) If the Windows Defaults is not a set but just info built from the way my computer was already set up, how comes it normally has its correct icon?

Missing Microsoft Outlook Icon: The ' Restore Windows Default ' option in IconPackager points to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\outlook.exe,7. On my system there is no outlook.exe in that folder, as far as I can tell it should point to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Outlook.exe,1. Even if the IconPackager pointed to the folder the icon would be the wrong number. I'm using Microsoft Office 2000 Pro, with all files run from hard disk because I have plenty of gigs to spare and inserting discs when asked pisses me off.

Is IconPackager compatible with msupdates? In one recent msupdate, I seem to have received a new shdocvw.dll; this contains different icons that the one I had when I looked the week before. Do the ' Restore to Windows Default ' options actually work interactively? As in finding the defaults as and where they are on the system when IconPackager is installed and not just where the program thinks they should be...

Wrong Drive Icons: My computer came with a Compact Flash, a MS\SD and a SM/xD card reader. All of which had there own special icons. Of course I lose all of them if I apply an icon set or restore to windows defaults.

If the IconPackager actually looked to see what was default and then made an icon set named Windows Default (or My Current Theme or something) which I could apply I wouldn't have had any of the above problems.

Recycle Bin: I had applied the CopperDeck2 theme when I first tried Object Desktop. The Recycle Bin refused all attempts to change it back to default or any other icon after it had become the CopperDeckII icon, rebuilds/repairs, TweakUI, Display Properties - nothing but a reformat fixed it.

Object Zip:

This is not a problem but it's pretty damn annoying. Why doesn't the context menu have an option to extract straight to a new folder where you currently are? Winrar has the option and its way better than having a context menu option that can end up filling the screen. For example imagine how wide the menu gets if I want to work with this file:

C:\Documents and Settings\Necaradan666\My Documents\Necaradan666\Porno\Alternative Porn\Zombie Pr0n\October 2004\thenightofRISINGdead.jpg

disclaimer: I don't actually have those folders on my system

But I do have enough archives, which I use regularly, in just such locations. Just one click from the start menu but the actual file path is loooong. Before buying Object Desktop I used a shareware version of Winrar and it sucks that one I just paid for is not as good. Also; even though I chose to associate all types of archive with Object Zip, when working with .zip files it's Windows that does the extracting although the .zip's use the Object Zip icon. Winrar was totally overtaken by Object Zip and .rar's extract fine. Why the difference? I notice in Stardock Central that Object Zip is one of the oldest of the programs available to Object Desktop users (18/03/2004) perhaps it's time for an update.

Theme Manager:

The 'Restore to Windows Defaults’ doesn’t work like it should. When I first installed Theme Manager I had a non-Luna desktop wallpaper and when I chose to restore this is what I got back each time I applied, even after uninstalling and then reinstalling Object Desktop while I had Luna applied. I had also deleted the Stardock folder and the other wallpaper and the copy of it that Webshots made in the Documents and Settings. How did it keep coming back? It was really fucking annoying. When I select Windows Default that's what I should see, not some other shit I had there before. If there was an option for ' Windows Default ' and ' Your Previous Settings ' it might have been better. Also many icons didn't change (even when the rebuild/repair options are used) until I applied another theme. Many themes just wouldn't work only Basic Aquarium, CopperDeckII, MacPC and Terminator 3 downloaded and applied without crashing Theme Manager and sometimes freezing the whole system. That's only 50% success, not good enough.

On a somewhat unrelated note, the WMP skin from Terminator3 is one of the coolest looking skins I've used for WMP, but what is this huge white box around the outside of it? I can drag the player around the desktop by this white box too, so even if it was transparent it could get in the way of doing things. I am using the new WMP11beta but all my other skins from WMP9series+ work exactly the same as always. Does anyone else see this white box? If so whoever said it should be called ' official ' needs to work out what quality means.

SpringFolders:

Too slow even when the slider has been moved all the way up. By the time the folder opens I could be doing other shit.

Tab Launchpad:

I set this program to show a systray icon when it told me that I'd have no way to reveal it if Auto Hide was turned on. Too bad it still disappeared! Along with the systray icon! I had to go to task manager to close it down.

And what's with some of the shortcuts that install into the Start menu not having any icons? Jeez the package includes the damn IconDeveloper surely few more icons wouldn't have been too much trouble. They are only little extra programs but it’s all about style and being professional ya know? It makes me frown when things install to the Start menu and looks like they should belong in the system32 folder or something instead.

OMFG!!! Even as I am writing this text file (in Object Edit on the Desktop) I am experiencing catastrophic program failures! I just tried to make this post and found Internet Explorer won’t connect/load up properly even though Windows Live Messenger does so and signs me in instantly. I thought it might be conflicts with Stardock Central trying to be the default browser but it’s not and I can’t seem to fix the problem. Something has also destroyed my Desktop I can no longer right click or see any icons; even this text file disappeared! I have spent around five hours writing this and testing the programs again to make sure I don’t make false accusations and I thought it was gone!

Thank all the Gods for System Restore! This last time I reformatted I made sure to manually create a restore point before installing Stardock Central and downloading the Object Desktop files. I have to go to work today and didn’t have time for another reformat. Luckily I was able to uninstall all the Object Desktop components (with a large amount of errors for some reason) but after deleting all trace of Stardock and restoring the system I am back to normal. This system restore fiasco has concreted my hatred for all things Stardock related. I should have just flushed my $50 down the shitter!

ARRRRGH!