Please Read this if your UI is black and painting slowly

Published on December 17, 2005 By Neil Banfield In WindowBlinds

If you have installed a pirate copy (AKA cracked) version of WindowBlinds 5, please be aware that the crack is faulty and WindowBlinds will cease to function correctly on your computer.

To fix this you just need to uninstall WB and if you wish install a purchased copy of WB, or the trial.

To uninstall, you can either wait for your computer to login, unload WB (either using wbconfig, display properties, or from a command prompt calling WBLOAD UNLOAD) and then uninstall WB. Or you can boot into safe mode & uninstall WB from there.

Your computer has not been harmed in anyway. Whoever made the crack did a poor job and patched out code that causes WindowBlinds to no longer be able to paint bitmaps (so title bars, borders, everything will be black).

Comments (Page 1)

Bichur

on Dec 17, 2005

Jafo

on Dec 17, 2005

The price you 'pay'..........for not 'paying'....

Bichur

on Dec 17, 2005

you...you...you mean.....you get what you pay for?

aimzzz

on Dec 17, 2005

It boggles the mind that people using a crack will blame the initial program instead of the effects of the crack when they have problems...

And come onto the company forum & blast the company & the program...

And claim that it ruined their system when the fix is a simple uninstall...

Reppiks

on Dec 17, 2005

Im supprised they don't ask for their money back, crack writer's give refunds, don't they?

Diafragma

on Dec 18, 2005

No wonder a few people were asking me to help them with their WB program not skinning correctly and I couldn't tell what was wrong...

MilkMan0214

on Dec 18, 2005

So the cracked version was working fine, and then it spontaneously imploded? Did Stardock figure out a way to pull that off, or did the crackers just mess something up? If you guys did make that happen, congratulations... that would be the most amusing way to combat piracy I've seen yet. Let everyone who downloaded an illegal copy spend hours trying to fix their system, then laugh at them when they come on to the forums to complain. Nice.

Vailene

on Dec 18, 2005

Well done Neil. My sentiments exactally

It's things like this that need to be made an example of. Finally, I've seen someone take initiative to basically say, "Pee Off" (Kept it clean) to the "crackers".

Jafo

on Dec 18, 2005

As far as I'm aware...because WB is 'quite closely integrated into the MS OS if people mess with its code [read....'attempt to crack'] there is a very real chance that a standard Windows Update may adversely affect its smooth running....at least that's what seems to have happened.

Last I checked, my WB5 is ticking along nicely....and so are my most recent [up to date] Windows Updates...

That kinda-sorta means my WB is a legal one....

Frogboy

on Dec 18, 2005

There are various backup checks in WindowBlinds that work in a variety of ways. However, the cracks that are out there brute forced it and made it so that when one of the backup checks turned on, that WindowBlinds could no longer repaint their resources.

Threi

on Dec 18, 2005

or...they will just have patience till a better crack comes out...people have patience, u know...

Chris907

on Dec 18, 2005

**edit** Ah my issue was just NIS being dumb again.

vermin1302

on Dec 19, 2005

This is amusing; I installed WB5 that a friend gave me; said it was legit, gave me a serial number and all. Then I had this problem, found out it was because of some crack gone wrong.

Well, needless to say, I've gone back to the copy of WB4.x that I purchased last year. Assclown, giving me pirated software.

nobodyspecial97

on Dec 19, 2005

Well Funny thing... i just purchased a copy today.. updated and well.. still having similiar issues here... i guess i will have to uninstall and try again... $%#@%$%@%@$!!!

Neil Banfield

on Dec 19, 2005

nobodyspecial97: You will need to remove all of WB before installing the full version. If wbsrv.dll remains on your pc after an uninstall, then delete it (you may need to rename it instead) before installing the full version.

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