Hapkido

The "translucent aero effect" isn't something you "turn on". It works inherently, IF your video card is capable of per pixel rendering. If you open the WB configuration window and click on "View my system information", it will indicate if your system's video has that feature or not. Secondly, some skins have different substyles. Have you checked to see if the one in question does and if so, is there one that specifically says, "WB5" or something similar? Sometimes authors create a subst

You really have little to worry about re: Beta versions of WindowBlinds. Rarely are there any problems with them. One of the great features of using Stardock Central is that it will automatically "Archive" (aka: backup) your currently installed version before downloading and installing any updates. IF the new updated version is problematic, you can easily revert to an earlier version that was working for you.

I went through that hassle too a year or more ago and found it very frustrating. The easiest solution I found is to right-click on the download link/button and choose, "Save Target as". You can then designate where you want to download the file to and change the filename if desired. Works for me!!

Thx, i'll download windows blinds and try making it. Best of luck trying to create a skin with WindowBlinds. That isn't the program you need. What you need is SkinStudio.

Try this one: AeroGlassV5 by Ironjer

IF it is a WindowBlinds skin, it is possibly quite old, e.g., pre-version 5.x. or created for version 4.0 or older. This is indicated by the number/type of system buttons in the upper right-hand corner of the window. Unless you are running an older version of WB, my guess is that the skin, again IF it is a WB skin, wouldn't be Win XP compatible either, i.e., things like the Logoff, Shutdown dialogs and Task Pane images would display the native XP dialogs and images.

Are you sure that it is a WindowBlinds skin?

BTW, I have a paid subscription for wincustomize but only a "user level 4" status, yet I can and do rate skins often?? And thanks for your understanding. If make a faux pas, intentional or otherwise, I do feel some responsibility to correct it if possible and to offer my apology. Yeh, I realize that such behaviour is rare today, but let's just say I'm "old school". <img src="http://images.stardock.com/sd_com/smiles/Wink.gif" bor

Bichur, I appreciate what you are saying and the attempt to motivate me to continue. But at this point I simply don't have the interest. I redownloaded and installed DesktopX again after uninstalling it this afternoon and loaded "AeroXP V.2" since it has a "How to do..." help file included. Well, my attempts to add Outlook to the "Office" menu following the destructions were a total failure. I tried to customize a couple of other, what appeared to be simple things, and they too ended up

Thanks! I spent some time reading through that "Users Guide" and although it is a valuable resource it doesn't explain how to change the things which I need/want to change, at least in a way that I can comprehend, e.g., menu items in the "Themes" I have been trying. So again, different strokes for different folks applies here. The "Themes" look great in screenshots but are not usable in their default form and I simply don't have the wherewithal to try and customize them to be practical for what

i've never used a 64bit machine b4, so i'm a little new with all that. Unfortunately, you are not alone regarding "64-bit". It seems many make the same mistake by confusing 64-bit CPU (processors) with 64-bit Operating Systems. Briefly, you can run any Operating System (32-bit or 64-bit) with a 64-bit CPU. But 64-bit Operating Systems, e.g., XP 64-bit

Sorry, I assumed that the $20 he paid was for a WC subscription, since that is, or at least it was, the price to purchase one. WindowBlinds sells for $19.95, so if you are correct, then he rounded that off to $20 and thus my unintentional mistake.

Bichur, Thanks for confirming things and adding to my woefully lacking knowledge re: DesktopX. I went ahead and loaded a couple of the "Themes" (*.desktop) which looked intriguing and immediately realized that in order to make them fully usable, it would require lots of time creating/modifying things. Unfortunately, this is the one area where Stardock applications fail miserably; DOCUMENTATION and thus these DesktopX themes serve no practical purpose to me personally. Methinks I'm going

I thought I would try out a few DesktopX "themes" that caught my eye on wincustomize.com. So, I've downloaded installed DesktopX via Stardock Central. But I've never used this program before and would like some basic information: 1) I'm running WindowBlinds 5.5 and I'm wondering if there is anything I need to do with that, e.g., do I need to load the default XP Luna theme? unload WB? etc. 2) I'm also running IconPackager. Is my current iconpackager theme going to be affected?<b

I Paid my $20 When you visit wincustomize.com, are you prompted to login? Logging into your account gives you access to the rating feature.

Make sure that you completely uninstall your current version of WindowBlinds FIRST before downloading and installing WB via Stardock Central. A good practice in situations like this is to uninstall WB using "Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs". Then delete all the application files from the WindowBlinds folder: "C:\Program Files\Stardock\Object Desktop\WindowBlinds". You can, however, leave any skin folders that are in there.

Assuming that you have WindowBlinds installed, after you download the ".suite" file, you can rename the extension to ".zip", e.g., "themename.zip". Open the file and then you will see the WB skin's ".wba" file. Extract/copy that file to another location and then you can add it via the WindowBlinds configuration window. Or you can simply double-click on the ".wba" file and it will be automatically installed for you.

Here is "Black XP" skin which basically nothing more than a recolored Windows XP Luna skin. If I understand you correctly, this is what you are looking for: Black XP .

I've got an annoying problem with IconX. Sporadically, the Desktop icons revert to the default size, 32 pxs and get grouped to the upper left corner of the screen. If I double-click on any of them, they immediately change back to the IconX settings, which is simply the "default" theme. All the ObjectDesktop programs I'm using are the latest versions; beta or released; WindowBlinds, IconPackager, IconX and Enhanced File Dialog. My video card (EVGA GeForce 7600 GT) drivers are also runnin

Windowblinds doesn't run off of the CPU.

Yes that is perfectly normal. Remember it is System IDLE process.

To be honest...... I've never had "stability" issues with any version/build of WB. I have had various "anomalies" which most always were corrected in newer builds. Any other problems I have encountered have always been with my system, settings, tweaks, etc.; not WB itself.

@ Bichur: I've installed the latest version 5.49d(b).025 and have seen no problems whatsoever. So the problem is not systemic/global but rather user specific.

Again, for me it's just an annoyance and not something that would curtail my use of IconX. But that feature is something I use often, e.g., comparing file sizes quickly by using the mouseover tooltips. There shouldn't be an option in IconX to enable them since they are enabled by default as part of XP.

I must be a glutton for punishment because I installed IconX once again to see if it would work without issues on my newly built system. The Desktop icons are great and so far none of the former problems I experienced when I tried it before have surfaced. However, there is one annoyance that is present that I just noticed tonight. XP's default "mouseover" feature isn't working. To be more specific, normally if you have a file, for example, on your Desktop, you can mouseover the icon and a toolti